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OP  OUR  TIME  AND  COUNTRY  WHO   BY  WISE  AND   GENEROUS    GIVING 

HAVE   ENCOURAGED  THE   SEARCH  AFTER  TRUTH 

IN  ALL    DEPARTMENTS   OF   KNOWLEDGE 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 


BY 

JOHN  DEWEY 

PROFESSOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

WITH  THE  CO-OPERATION  OF  MEMBERS  AND  FELLOWS  OF  THE 
DEPARTMENT  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


THE  DECENNIAL  PUBLICATIONS 
SECOND  SERIES     VOLUME  XI 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 
1909 


EDUCATION 


COPYRIGHT  1903  BY 
THE  UNIVEESITY  OF  CHICAGO 


Published  September  1903 
Second  Impression  May  1909 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  University  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A 


PREFACE 

THIS  volume  presents  some  results  of  the  work  done  in  the 
matter  of  logical  theory  in  the  Department  of  Philosophy  of 
the  University  of  Chicago  in  the  first  decade  of  its  existence. 

£  >  ^|          •  «Mt 

The  eleven  Studies  are  the  work  of  eight  different  hands, 
all,  with  the  exception  of  the  editor,  having  at  some  period 
held  Fellowships  in  this  University,  Dr.  Heidel  in  Greek, 
the  others  in  Philosophy.  Their  names  and  present  pur- 
suits are  indicated  in  the  Table  of  Contents.  The  editor 
has  occasionally,  though  rarely,  added  a  footnote  or  phrase 
which  might  serve  to  connect  one  Study  more  closely  with 
another.  The  pages  in  the  discussion  of  Hypothesis,  on 
Mill  and  Whewell,  are  by  him.  With  these  exceptions, 
each  writer  is  individually  and  completely  responsible  for 
his  own  Study. 

The  various  Studies  present,  the  editor  believes,  about 
the  relative  amount  of  agreement  and  disagreement  that  is 
natural  in  view  of  the  conditions  of  their  origin.  The 
various  writers  have  been  in  contact  with  one  another  in 
Seminars  and  lecture  courses  in  pursuit  of  the  same  topics, 
and  have  had  to  do  with  shaping  one  another's  views. 
There  are  several  others,  not  represented  in  this  volume, 
who  have  also  participated  in  the  evolution  of  the  point  of 
view  herein  set  forth,  and  to  whom  the  writers  acknowledge 
their  indebtedness.  The  disagreements  proceed  from  the 
diversity  of  interests  with  which  the  different  writers  ap- 
proach the  logical  topic;  and  from  the  fact  that  the  point 
of  view  in  question  is  still  (happily)  developing  and  showing 
no  signs  of  becoming  a  closed  system. 

If  the  Studies  themselves  do  not  give  a  fair  notion  of  the 

ix 


677782 


x  PBEFACE 

nature  and  degree  of  the  harmony  in  the  different  writers' 
methods,  a  preface  is  not  likely  to  succeed  in  so  doing.  A  few 
words  may  be  in  place,  however,  about  a  matter  repeatedly 
touched  upon,  but  nowhere  consecutively  elaborated — the 
more  ultimate  philosophical  bearing  of  what  is  set  forth.  All 
.  j  I  agree,  the  editor  takes  the  liberty  of  saying,  that  iudgmenjys_ 
flffi^fmt.ral  function  of  fenowing,  and  hence  affords  the  central 
^roblempf  logic ;  that  since  the  get  of^knowing  is  intimately 
and  indissolubly  connected  with  the  like  yet  diverse  functions 
of  affection,  appreciation,  and  practice,  it  only  distorts  results 
reached  to  treat  knowing  as  a  self -inclosed  and  self-explana- 
tory whole — hence  the  intimate  connections  of  logical  theory 
with  functional  psychology;  that  since  fenowMge  appears 
-  as  a  funcMon^iEithii^experience,  and  yet  passes  judgment 
upon  both  the  processes  and  contents  of  other  functions,  its 
work  and  aim  must  be  distinctively  reconstructive  or  trans- 
formatory;  that  since  Reality  must  be  defined  in  terms  of 
experience,  judgment  appears  accordingly  as  the  medium 
through  which  the  consciously  effected  evolution  of  Reality 
goes  on;  that  there  is  no  reasonable  standard  of  truth  (or  of 
success  of  the  knowing  function)  in  general,  except  upon  the 
postulate  that  Reality  is  thus  dynamic  or  self-evolving,  and, 
in  particular,  except  through  reference  to  the  specific  offices 
which  knowing  is  called  upon  to  perform  in  readjusting  and 
expanding  the  means  and  ends  of  life.  And  all  agree  that 
this  conception  gives  the  only  promising  basis  upon  which 
the  working  methods  of  science,  and  the  proper  demands  of 
the  moral  life,  may  co-operate.  All  this,  doubtless,  does  not 
take  us  very  far  on  the  road  to  detailed  conclusions,  but  it 
is  better,  perhaps,  to  get  started  in  the  right  direction  than 
to  be  so  definite  as  to  erect  a  dead-wall  in  the  way  of  farther 
movement  of  thought. 

In  general,  the  obligations  in  logical  matters  of  the  writers 


PREFACE  xi 


are  roughly  commensurate  with  the  direction  of  their  criti- 
cisms. Upon  the  whole,  most  is  due  to  those  whose  views 
are  most  sharply  opposed.  To  Mill,  Lotze,  Bosanquet,  and 
Bradley  the  writers  then  owe  special  indebtedness.  The 
editor  acknowledges  personal  indebtedness  to  his  present 
colleagues,  particularly  to  Mr.  George  H.  Mead,  in  the 
Faculty  of  Philosophy,  and  to  a  former  colleague,  Dr.  Alfred 
H.  Lloyd,  of  the  University  of  Michigan.  For  both  inspira- 
tion and  the  forging  of  the  tools  with  which  the  writers 
have  worked  there  is  a  pre-eminent  obligation  on  the  part 
of  all  of  us  to  William  James,  of  Harvard  University,  who, 
we  hope,  will  accept  this  acknowledgment  and  this  book  as 
unworthy  tokens  of  a  regard  and  an  admiration  that  are 
coequal. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

I.    Thought  and  its  Subject-Matter  •  1 

By  JOHN  DEWEY 

II.    Thought  and  its  Subject-Matter :  The  Antecedents  of 

Thought      -  -      23 

By  JOHN  DEWEY 

III.  Thought    and    its   Subject-Matter:    The  Datum  of 
Thinking     -  -      49 

By  JOHN  DEWEY 

IV.  Thought  and  its  Subject-Matter:    The  Content  and 
Object  of  Thought      -  -65 

By  JOHN  DEWEY 

V.    Bosanqiiet's  Theory  of  Judgment       -  86 

By  HELEN  BRADFORD  THOMPSON,  Ph.D.,  Director  of  the 
Psychological  Laboratory  of  Mount  Holyoke  College 

VI.    Typical  Stages  in  the  Development  of  Judgment       -    127 
By  SIMON  FRASER  MCLENNAN,  Ph.D.,  Professor  of  Phi- 
losophy in  Oberlin  College 

VII.    The  Nature  of  Hypothesis  -  -    143 

By  MYRON  Lucius  ASHLEY,  Ph.D.,  Instructor,  American 
Correspondence  School 

VIII.     Image  and  Idea  in  Logic     -  -    183 

By  WILLARD  CLARK  GORE,  Ph.D.,  Assistant  Professor 
of  Psychology  in  the  University  of  Chicago 

IX.    The  Logic  of  the  Pre-Socratic  Philosophy       -        -    203 
By  WILLIAM   ARTHUR    HEIDEL,    Ph.D.,  Professor   of 
Latin  in  Iowa  College 

X.    Valuation  as  a  Logical  Process  -        -    227 

By  HENRY  WALDGRAVE  STUART,  Ph.D.,  Instructor  in 
Philosophy  in  the  State  University  of  Iowa 

XI.    Some  Logical  Aspects  of  Purpose       ....    34.1 
By  ADDISON  WEBSTER  MOORE,  Ph.D.,  Assistant  Pro- 
fessor of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Chicago 

xiii 


THOUGHT  AND  ITS  SUBJECT-MATTER:  THE  ^GENERAL 
PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY  j  <\l  ' 


No  ONE  doubts  that  ffhnngfrt.  at  least  refi^jti^jas  i 
from  what  is  sometimes  called  constitutive,  thought,  is  jieriva- 
tive_and  gecondary.  It  comes  after  something  and  out  of 
something,  and  for  the  sake  of  something.  No  one  doubts 
that  the  thinking  of  everyday  practical  life  and  of  science  is 
of  this  reflective  type.  We  think  about  ;  we  reflect  over.  If 
we  ask  what  it  is  which  is  primary  and  radical  to  thought; 
if  we  ask  what  is  the  final  objective  for  the  sake  of  which 
thought  intervenes;  if  we  ask  in  what  sense  we  are  to  under- 
stand thought  as  a  derived  procedure,  we  are  plunging  our- 
selves into  the  very  heart  of  the  logical  problem  :  the  relation 
of  thought  to  its  empirical  antecedents  and  to  its  consequent, 
truth,  and  the  relation  of  truth  to  reality. 

Yet  from  the  naive  point  of  view  no  difficulty  attaches  to 
these  questions.  The  antecedents  of  thought  are  our  uni- 
verse of  life  and  love  ;  of  appreciation  and  struggle.  We 
think  about  anything  and  everything:  snow  on  the  ground; 
the  alternating  clanks  and  thuds  that  rise  from  below;  the 
relation  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  to  the  embroglio  in  Vene- 
zuela ;  the  relation  of  art  to  industry  ;  the  poetic  quality  of 
a  painting  by  Botticelli  ;  the  battle  of  Marathon  ;  the  economic 
interpretation  of  history  ;  the  proper  definition  of  cause  ;  the 
best  method  of  reducing  expenses;  whether  and  how  to 
renew  the  ties  of  a  broken  friendship;  the  interpretation  of 
an  equation  in  hydrodynamics;  etc. 

Through  the  madness  of  this  miscellaneous  citation  there 
appears  so  much  of  method:  anything  —  event,  act,  value, 

1 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 


ideal,  person,  or  place — may  be  an  object  of  thought.  Reflec- 
tion busies  itself  alike  with  physical  nature,  the  record  of 
social  achievement,  and  the  endeavors  of  social  aspiration. 
It  is  with  reference  to  such  affairs  that  thought  is  derivative ; 
it  is  with  reference  to  them  that  it  intervenes  or  mediates, 
"j  6*t  Taking  soaie;part  of  the  universe  of  action,  of  affection,  of 
'  tcl  social  constriction,  under  its  special  charge,  and  having 
J  J:-  ;lii?.sie(i  £ts$lf .'therewith  sufficiently  to  meet  the  special  diffi- 
culty presented,  thought  releases  that  topic  and  enters  upon 
further  more  direct  experience. 

Sticking  for  a  moment  to  this  naive  standpoint,  we  recog- 
nize a  certain  rhythm  of  direct  practice  and  derived  theory ; 
of  primary  construction  and  of  secondary  criticism ;  of  living 
appreciation  and  of  abstract  description;  of  active  endeavor 
and  of  pale  reflection.  We  find  that  every  more  direct 
primary  attitude  passes  upon  occasion  into  its  secondary 
deliberative  and  discursive  counterpart.  We  find  that  when 
the  latter  has  done  its  work  it  passes  away  and  passes  on. 
From  the  naive  standpoint  such  rhythm  is  taken  as  a  matter 
of  course.  There  is  no  attempt  to  state  either  the  nature  of 
the  occasion  which  demands  the  thinking  attitude,  nor  to 
formulate  a  theory  of  the  standard  by  which  is  judged  its 
success^  No  general  theory  is  propounded  as  to  the  exact 
relationship  between  thinking  and  what  antecedes  and  suc- 
ceeds it.  Much  less  do  we  ask  how  empirical  circumstances 
can  generate  rationality  of  thought ;  nor  how  it  is  possible 
for  reflection  to  lay  claim  to  power  of  determining  truth  and 
thereby  of  constructing  further  reality. 

If  we  were  to  ask  the  thinking  of  naive  life  to  present, 
with  a  minimum  of  theoretical  elaboration,  its  conception  of 
its  own  practice,  we  should  get  an  answer  running  not  unlike 
this:  Thinking  is  a  kind  of  activity  which  we  perform  at 
specific  need,  just  as  at  other  need  we  engage  in  other  sorts  of 
activity  :  as  converse  with  a  friend ;  draw  a  plan  for  a  house ; 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY          3 

take  a  walk;  eat  a  dinner;  purchase  a  suit  of  clothes;  etc., 
etc.  In  general,  its  material  is  anything  in  the  wide  universe 
which  seems  to  be  relevant  to  this  need — anything  which 
may  serve  as  a  resource  in  defining  the  difficulty  or  in  sug- 
gesting modes  of  dealing  effectively  with  it.  The  measure 
of  its  success,  the  standard  of  its  validity,  is  precisely  the 
degree  in  which  the  thinking  actually  disposes  of  the  diffi- 
culty and  allows  us  to  proceed  with  more  direct  modes  of 
experiencing,  that  are  forthwith  possessed  of  more  assured 
and  deepened  value. 

If  we  inquire  why  the  naive  attitude  does  not  go  on  to 
elaborate  these  implications  of  its  own  practice  into  a  sys- 
tematic theory,  the  answer,  on  its  own  basis,  is  obvious. 
Thought  arises  in  response  to  its  own  occasion.  And  this 
occasion  is  so  exacting  that  there  is  time,  as  there  is  need, 
only  to  do  the  thinking  which  is  needed  in  that  occasion  — 
not  to  reflect  upon  the  thinking  itself.  Reflection  follows  so 
naturally  upon  its  appropriate  cue,  its  issue  is  so  obvious,  so 
practical,  the  entire  relationship  is  so  organic,  that  once 
grant  the  position  that  thought  arises  in  reaction  to. specific 
demand,  and  there  is  not  the  particular  type  of  thinking 
called  logical  theory  because  there  is  not  the  practical  demand 
for  reflection  of  that  sort.  Our  attention  is  taken  up  with 
particular  questions  and  specific  answers.  What  we  have  to 
reckon  with  is  not  the  problem  of,  How  can  I  think  iiber- 
haupt?  but,  How  shall  I  think  right  here  and  now?  Not 
what  is  the  test  of  thought  at  large,  but  what  validates  and 
confirms  this  thought? 

In  conformity  with  this  view,  it  follows  that  a  generic 
account  of  our  thinking  behavior,  the  generic  account  termed  f 
logical  theory,  arises  at  historic  periods  in  which  the  situa- 
tion has  lost  the  organic  character  above  described.  The 
general  theory  of  reflection,  as  over  against  its  concrete 
exercise,  appears  when  occasions  for  reflection  are  so  over- 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 


whelming  and  so  mutually  conflicting  that  specific  adequate 
response  in  thought  is  blocked.  Again,  it  shows  itself  when 
practical  affairs  are  so  multifarious,  complicated,  and  remote 
from  control  that  thinking  is  held  off  from  successful  pas- 
sage into  them. 

Anyhow  (sticking  to  the  naive  standpoint),  it  is  true  that 
the  stimulus  to  that  particular  form  of  reflective  thinking 
termed  logical  theory  is  found  when  circumstances  require 
the  act  of  thinking  and  nevertheless  impede  clear  and  coher- 
ent thinking  in  detail;  or  when  they  occasion  thought  and 
then  prevent  the  results  of  thinking  from  exercising  directive 
influence  upon  the  immediate  concerns  of  life.  Under  these 
conditions  we  get  such  questions  as  the  following:  What  is 
the  relation  of  rational  thought  to  crude  or  unreflective  experi- 
ence? What  is  the  relation  of  thought  to  reality?  What 
is  the  barrier  which  prevents  reason  from  complete  penetra- 
tion into  the  world  of  truth  ?  What  is  it  that  makes  us  live 
alternately  in  a  concrete  world  of  experience  in  which  thought 
as  such  finds  not  satisfaction,  and  in  a  world  of  ordered 
thought  which  is  yet  only  abstract  and  ideal? 

It  is  not  my  intention  here  to  pursue  the  line  of  historical 
inquiry  thus  suggested.  Indeed,  the  point  would  not  be 
mentioned  djd  it  not  serve  to  fix  attention  upon  the  nature 
of  the  logical  problem. 

It  is  in  dealing  with  this  latter  type  of  questions  that 
logical  theory  has  taken  a  turn  which  separates  it  widely 
from  the  theoretical  implications  of  practical  deliberation 
and  of  scientific  research.  The  two  latter,  however  much  they 
differ  from  each  other  in  detail,  agree  in  a  fundamental 
principle.  They  both  assume  that  every  reflective  problem 
and  operation  arises  with  reference  to  some  specific  situation, 
and  has  to  subserve  a  specific  purpose  dependent  upon  its 
own  occasion.  They  assume  and  observe  distinct  limits — 
limits  from  which  and  to  which.  There  is  the  limit  of  origin 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY    5 

in  the  needs  of  the  particular  situation  which  evokes  reflec- 
tion. There  is  the  limit  of  terminus  in  successful  dealing 
with  the  particular  problem  presented — or  in  retiring,  baffled, 
to  take  up  some  other  question.  The  query  that  at  once  faces 
us  regarding  the  nature  of  logical  theory  is  whether  reflection 
upon  reflection  shall  recognize  these  limits,  endeavoring  to 
formulate  them  more  exactly  and  to  define  their  relationships 
to  each  other  more  adequately ;  or  shall  it  abolish  limits,  do 
away  with  the  matter  of  specific  conditions  and  specific  aims 
of  thought,  and  discuss  thought  and  its  relation  to  empirical 
antecedents  and  rational  consequents  (truth)  at  large  ? 

At  first  blush,  it  might  seem  as  if  the  very  nature  of 
logical  theory  as  generalization  of  the  reflective  process  must 
of  necessity  disregard  the  matter  of  particular  conditions  and 
particular  results  as  irrelevant.  How,  the  implication  runs, 
could  reflection  become  generalized  save  by  elimination  of 
details  as  irrelevant  ?  Such  a  conception  in  fixing  the  central 
problem  of  logic  fixes  once  for  all  its  future  career  and  mate- 
rial. The  essential  business  of  logic  is  henceforth  to  discuss 
the  relation  of  thought  as  such  to  reality  as  such.  It  may, 
indeed,  involve  much  psychological  material,  particularly  in 
the  discussion  of  the  processes  which  antecede  thinking  and 
which  call  it  out.  It  may  involve  much  discussion  of  the 
concrete  methods  of  investigation  and  verification  employed 
in  the  various  sciences.  It  may  busily  concern  itself  with 
the  differentiation  of  various  types  and  forms  of  thought — 
different  modes  of  conceiving,  various  conformations  of  judg- 
ment, various  types  of  inferential  reasoning.  But  it  concerns 
itself  with  any  and  all  of  these  three  fields,  not  on  their  own 
account  or  as  ultimate,  but  as  subsidiary  to  the  main  prob- 
lem :  the  relation  of  thought  as  such,  or  at  large,  to  reality  as 
such,  or  at  large.  Some  of  the  detailed  considerations  referred 
to  may  throw  light  upon  the  terms  under  which  thought 
transacts  its  business  with  reality ;  upon,  say,  certain  peculiar 


6  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

limitations  it  has  to  submit  to  as  best  it  may.  Other  con- 
siderations throw  light  upon  the  ways  in  which  thought  gets 
at  reality.  Still  other  considerations  throw  light  upon  the 
forms  which  thought  assumes  in  attacking  and  apprehending 
reality.  But  in  the  end  all  this  is  incidental.  In  the  end  the 
one  problem  holds:  How  do  the  specifications  of  thought  as 
such  hold  good  of  reality  as  such?  In  fine,  logic  is  sup- 
posed to  grow  out  of  the  epistemological  inquiry  and  to  lead 
up  to  its  solution. 

From  this  point  of  view  various  aspects  of  logical  theory 
are  well  stated  by  an  author  whom  later  on  we  shall  con- 
sider in  some  detail.  Lotze1  refers  to  "universal  forms  and 
principles  of  thought  which  hold  good  everywhere  both  in 
judging  of  reality  and  in  weighing  possibility,  irrespective 
of  any  difference  in  the  objects."  This  defines  the  business 
of  pure  logic.  This  is  clearly  the  question  of  thought  as 
such — of  thought  at  large  or  in  general.  Then  we  have  the 
question  "of  how  far  the  most  complete  structure  of  thought 
....  can  claim  to  be  an  adequate  account  of  that  which  we 
seem  compelled  to  assume  as  the  object  and  occasion  of  our 
ideas."  This  is  clearly  the  question  of  the  relation  of  thought 
at  large  to  reality  at  large.  It  is  epistemology.  Then 
comes  "applied  logic,"  having  to  do  with  the  actual  employ- 
ment of  concrete  forms  of  thought  with  reference  to  investi- 
gation of  specific  topics  and  subjects.  This  "  applied"  logic 
would,  if  the  standpoint  of  practical  deliberation  and  of  scien- 
tific research  were  adopted,  be  the  sole  genuine  logic.  But 
the  existence  of  thought  in  itself  having  been  agreed  upon, 
we  have  in  this  "applied"  logic  only  an  incidental  inquiry  of 
how  the  particular  resistances  and  oppositions  which  "pure" 
thought  meets  from  particular  matters  may  best  be  dis- 
counted. It  is  concerned  with  methods  of  investigation 
which  obviate  defects  in  the  relationship  of  thought  at 

i  Logic  (translation,  Oxford,  1888),  Vol.  I,  pp.  10, 11.    Italics  mine. 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY    7 

large  to  reality  at  large,  as  these  present  themselves  under 
the  limitations  of  human  experience.  It  deals  merely  with 
hindrances,  and  with  devices  for  overcoming  them;  it  is 
directed  by  considerations  of  utility.  When  we  reflect  that 
this  field  includes  the  entire  procedure  of  practical  delibera- 
tion and  of  concrete  scientific  research,  we  begin  to  realize 
something  of  the  significance  of  the  theory  of  logic  which 
regards  the  limitations  of  specific  origination  and  specific 
outcome  as  irrelevant  to  its  main  problem,  which  assumes  an 
activity  of  thought  "pure"  or  "in  itself,"  that  is,  "irrespec- 
tive of  any  difference  in  its  objects." 

This  suggests,  by  contrast,  the  opposite  mode  of  stating 
the  problem  of  logical  theory.  Generalization  of  the  nature 
of  the  reflective  process  certainly  involves  elimination  of  much 
of  the  specific  material  and  contents  of  the  thought-situa- 
tions of  daily  life  and  of  critical  science.  Quite  compatible 
with  this,  however,  is  the  notion  that  it  seizes  upon  certain 
specific  conditions  and  factors,  and  aims  to  bring  them  to 
clear  consciousness — not  to  abolish  them.  While  eliminat- 
ing the  particular  material  of  particular  practical  and  scien- 
tific pursuits,  (1)  it  may  strive  to  hit  upon  the  common 
denominator  in  the  various  situations  which  are  antecedent 
or  primary  to  thought  and  which  evoke  it ;  (2)  it  may  attempt 
to  show  how  typical  features  in  the  specific  antecedents  of 
thought  call  out  to  diverse  typical  modes  of  thought-reaction ; 
(3)  it  may  attempt  to  state  the  nature  of  the  specific  con- 
sequences in  which  thought  fulfils  its  career. 

(1)  It  does  not  eliminate  dependence  upon  specific  occa- 
sions as  provocative  of  thought;  but  endeavors  to  define 
what  in  the  various  situations  constitutes  them  thought- 
provoking.  The  specific  occasion  is  not  eliminated,  but  in- 
sisted upon  and  brought  into  the  foreground.  Consequently 
psychological  considerations  are  not  subsidiary  incidents, 
but  of  essential  importance  so  far  as  they  enable  us  to  trace 


8  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

the  generation  of  the  thought-situation.  (2)  So  from  this 
point  of  view  the  various  types  and  modes  of  conceiving,  judg- 
ing, and  inference  are  treated,  not  as  qualifications  of  thought 
per  se  or  at  large,  but  of  thought  engaged  in  its  specific, 
most  economic,  effective  response  to  its  own  particular  occa- 
sion; they  are  adaptations  for  control  of  stimuli.  The  dis- 
tinctions and  classifications  that  have  been  accumulated  in 
"formal"  logic  are  relevant  data;  but  they  demand  inter- 
pretation from  the  standpoint  of  use  as  organs  of  adjust- 
ment to  material  antecedents  and  stimuli.  (3)  Finally  the 
question  of  validity,  or  ultimate  objective  of  thought,  is  rele- 
vant ;  but  is  such  as  a  matter  of  the  specific  issue  of  the  specific 
career  of  a  thought-function.  All  the  typical  investigatory 
and  verificatory  procedures*  of  the  various  sciences  are  inher- 
ently concerned  as  indicating  the  ways  in  which  thought 
actually  brings  itself  to  its  own  successful  fulfilment  in 
dealing  with  various  types  of  problems. 

While  the  epistemological  type  of  logic  may,  as  we  have 
seen,  leave  (under  the  name  of  applied  logic),  a  subsidiary 
place  open  for  the  instrumental  type,  the  type  which  deals 
with  thinking  as  a  specific  procedure  relative  to  a  specific 
antecedent  occasion  and  to  a  subsequent  specific  fulfilment, 
is  not  able  to  reciprocate  the  favor.  From  its  point  of  view, 
an  attempt  to  discuss  the  antecedents,  data,  forms,  and  objec- 
tive of  thought,  apart  from  reference  to  particular  position 
occupied,  and  particular  part  played  in  the  growth  of  experi- 
ence is  to  reach  results  which  are  not  so  much  either  true  or 
false  as  they  are  radically  meaningless — because  they  are 
considered  apart  from  limits.  Its  results  are  not  only 
abstractions  (for  all  theorizing  ends  in  abstractions),  but 
abstractions  without  possible  reference  or  bearing.  From 
this  point  of  view,  the  taking  of  something,  whether  that 
something  be  thinking  activity,  its  empirical  condition,  or 
its  objective  goal,  apart  from  the  limits  of  a  historic  or  devel- 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY          9 

oping  situation,  is  the  essence  of  metaphysical  procedure — 
in  the  s'ense  of  metaphysics  which  makes  a  gulf  between  it 
and  science. 

As  the  reader  has  doubtless  anticipated,  it  is  the  object 
of  this  chapter  to  present  the  problem  and  industry  of  reflect- 
ive thought  from  this  latter  point  of  view.  I  recur  again 
to  the  standpoint  of  naive  experience,  using  the  term  in  a 
sense  wide  enough  to  cover  both  practical  procedure  and 
concrete  scientific  research.  I  resume  by  saying  that  this 
point  of  view  knows  no  fixed  distinction  between  the  empiri- 
cal values  of  unreflective  life  and  the  most  abstract  process 
of  rational  thought.  It  knows  no  fixed  gulf  between  the 
highest  flight  of  theory  and  control  of  the  details  of  practical 
construction  and  behavior.  It  passes,  according  to  the  occa- 
sion and  opportunity  of  the  moment,  from  the  attitude  of  lov- 
ing and  struggling  and  doing  to  that  of  thinking  and  the 
reverse.  Its  contents  or  material  shift  their  values  back 
and  forth  from  technological  or  utilitarian  to  aesthetic,  ethic, 
or  affectional.  It  utilizes  data  of  perception  or  of  discursive 
ideation  as  need  calls,  just  as  an  inventor  now  utilizes  heat, 
now  mechanical  strain,  now  electricity,  according  to  the 
demands  set  by  his  aim.  From  this  point  of  view,  more 
definite  logical  import  is  attached  to  our  earlier  statements 
(p.  2)  regarding  the  possibility  of  taking  anything  in  the 
universe  of  experience  as  subject-matter  of  thought.  Any- 
thing from  past  experience  may  be  taken  which  appears  to  be 
an  element  in  either  the  statement  or  the  solution  of  the 
present  problem.  Thus  we  understand  the  coexistence 
without  contradiction  of  an  indeterminate  possible  field  and 
a  limited  actual  field.  The  undefined  set  of  means  becomes 
specific  through  reference  to  an  end. 

In  all  this,  there  is  no  difference  of  kind  between  the 
methods  of  science  and  those  of  the  plain  man.  The  difference 
is  the  greater  control  in  science  of  the  statement  of  the  prob- 


10  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

lem,  and  of  the  selection  and  use  of  relevant  material,  both 
sensible  or  ideational.  The  two  are  related  to  each  other 
just  as  the  hit-or-miss,  trial-and-error  inventions  of  uncivi- 
lized man  stand  to  the  deliberate  and  consecutively  per- 
sistent efforts  of  a  modern  inventor  to  produce  a  certain 
complicated  device  for  doing  a  comprehensive  piece  of  work. 
Neither  the  plain  man  nor  the  scientific  inquirer  is  aware,  as 
he  engages  in  his  reflective  activity,  of  any  transition  from 
one  sphere  of  existence  to  another.  He  knows  no  two  fixed 
worlds  —  reality  on  one  side  and  mere  subjective  ideas  on 
the  other;  he  is  aware  of  no  gulf  to  cross.  He  assumes  un- 
interrupted, free,  and  fluid  passage  from  ordinary  experience 
to  abstract  thinking,  from  thought  to  fact,  from  things  to 
theories  and  back  again.  -Observation  passes  into  develop- 
ment of  hypothesis ;  deductive  methods  pass  to  use  in  de- 
scription of  the  particular;  inference  passes  into  action  with 
no  sense  of  difficulty  save  those  found  in  the  particular  task 
in  question.  The  fundamental  assumption  is  continuity  in 
and  of  experience. 

This  does  not  mean  that  fact  is  confused  with  idea,  or 
observed  datum  with  voluntary  hypothesis,  theory  with  doing, 
any  more  than  a  traveler  confuses  land  and  water  when  he 
journeys  from  one  to  the  other.  It  simply  means  that  each 
is  placed  and  used  with  reference  to  service  rendered  the 
other,  and  with  reference  to  future  use  of  the  other. 

Only  the  epistemological  spectator  is  aware  of  the  fact 
that  the  everyday  man  and  the  scientific  man  in  this  free  and 
easy  intercourse  are  rashly  assuming  the  right  to  glide  over 
a  cleft  in  the  very  structure  of  reality.  This  fact  raises  a 
query  not  favorable  to  the  epistemologist.  Why  is  it  that 
the  scientific  man,  who  is  constantly  plying  his  venturous 
traffic  of  exchange  of  facts  for  ideas,  of  theories  for  laws,  of 
real  things  for  hypotheses,  should  be  so  wholly  unaware  of 
the  radical  and  generic  (as  distinct  from  specific)  difficulty 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEOEY        11 

of  the  undertakings  in  which  he  is  engaged?  We  thus 
come  afresh  to  our  inquiry:  Does  not  the  epistemological 
logician  unwittingly  transfer  the  specific  difficulty  which 
always  faces  the  scientific  man — the  difficulty  in  detail  of 
correct  and  adequate  translation  back  and  forth  of  this  set 
of  facts  and  this  group  of  ideas — into  a  totally  different 
problem  of  the  wholesale  relation  of  thought  at  large  with 
reality  in  general  ?  If  such  be  the  case,  it  is  clear  that  the 
very  way  in  which  the  epistemological  type  of  logic  states 
the  problem  of  thinking,  in  relation  both  to  empirical  ante- 
cedents and  to  objective  truth,  makes  that  problem  insoluble. 
Working  terms,  terms  which  as  working  are  flexible  and 
historic,  relative,  are  transformed  into  absolute,  fixed,  and 
predetermined  forms  of  being. 

We  come  a  little  closer  to  the  problem  when  we  recognize 
that  every  scientific  inquiry  passes  historically  through  at 
least  four  stages,  (a)  The  first  of  these  stages  is,  if  I  may 
be  allowed  the  bull,  that  in  which  scientific  inquiry  does  not 
take  place  at  all,  because  no  problem  or  difficulty  in  the 
quality  of  the  experience  has  presented  itself  to  provoke 
reflection.  We  have  only  to  cast  our  eye  back  from  the 
existing  status  of  any  science,  or  back  from  the  status  of  any 
particular  topic  in  any  science,  to  discover  a  time  when  no 
reflective  or  critical  thinking  busied  itself  with  the  matter — 
when  the  facts  and  relations  were  taken  for  granted  and 
thus  were  lost  and  absorbed  in  the  value  which  accrued  from 
the  experience.  (6)  After  the  dawning  of  the  problem, 
there  comes  a  period  of  occupation  with  relatively  crude  and 
unorganized  facts — the  hunting  for,  locating,  and  collecting 
of  raw  material.  This  is  the  empiric  stage,  which  no  exist- 
ing science,  however  proud  in  its  attained  rationality,  can 
disavow  as  its  own  progenitor,  (c)  Then  there  is  also  a 
speculative  stage :  a  period  of  guessing,  of  making  hypothe- 
ses, of  framing  ideas  which  later  on  are  labeled  and  con- 


12  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

demned  as  only  ideas.  There  is  a  period  of  distinction  and 
classification-making  which  later  on  is  regarded  as  only 
mentally -gymnastic  in  character.  And  no  science,  however 
proud  in  its  present  security  of  experimental  assurance,  can 
disavow  a  scholastic  ancestor,  (d)  Finally,  there  comes  a 
period  of  fruitful  interaction  between  the  mere  ideas  and 
the  mere  facts:  a  period  when  observation  is  determined  by 
experimental  conditions  depending  upon  the  use  of  certain 
guiding  conceptions ;  when  reflection  is  directed  and  checked 
at  every  point  by  the  use  of  experimental  data,  and  by  the 
necessity  of  finding  such  form  for  itself  as  will  enable  it  to 
serve  as  premise  in  a  deduction  leading  to  evolution  of  new 
meanings,  and  ultimately  to  experimental  inquiry,  which 
brings  to  light  new  facts.  In  the  emerging  of  a  more  orderly 
and  significant  region  of  fact,  and  of  a  more  coherent  and 
self-luminous  system  of  meaning,  we  have  the  natural  limit 
of  evolution  of  the  logic  of  a  given  science. 

But  consider  what  has  happened  in  this  historic  record. 
Unanalyzed  experience  has  broken  up  into  distinctions  of 
facts  and  ideas;  the  factual  side  has  been  developed  by 
indefinite  and  almost  miscellaneous  descriptions  and  cumu- 
lative listings;  the  conceptual  side  has  been  developed  by 
unchecked  and  speculative  elaboration  of  definitions,  classi- 
fications, etc.*  There  has  been  a  relegation  of  accepted 
meanings  to  the  limbo  of  mere  ideas;  there  has  been  a  pas- 
sage of  some  of  the  accepted  facts  into  the  region  of  mere 
hypothesis  and  opinion.  Conversely,  there  has  been  a  con- 
tinued issuing  of  ideas  from  the  region  of  hypotheses  and 
theories  into  that  of  facts,  of  accepted  objective  and  mean- 
ingful contents.  Out  of  a  world  of  only  seeming  facts,  and 
of  only  doubtful  ideas,  there  emerges  a  universe  continually 
growing  in  definiteness,  order,  and  luminosity. 

This  progress,  verified  in  every  record  of  science,  is  an 
absolute  monstrosity  from  the  standpoint  of  the  epistemol- 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY   13 

ogy  which  assumes  a  thought  in  general,  on  one  side,  and  a 
reality  in  general,  on  the  other.  The  reason  that  it  does  not 
present  itself  as  such  a  monster  and  miracle  to  those  actually 
concerned  with  it  is  because  there  is  a  certain  homogeneity 
or  continuity  of  reference  and  of  use  which  controls  all 
diversities  in  both  the  modes  of  existence  specified  and  the 
grades  of  value  assigned.  The  distinction  of  thought  and 
fact  is  treated  in  the  growth  of  a  science,  or  of  any  particu- 
lar scientific  problem,  as  an  induced  and  intentional  practi- 
cal division  of  labor;  as  relative  assignments  of  position 
with  reference  to  performance  of  a  task ;  as  deliberate  distri- 
bution of  forces  at  command  for  their  more  economic  use. 
The  interaction  of  bald  fact  and  hypothetical  idea  into  the 
outcome  of  a  single  world  of  scientific  apprehension  and 
comprehension  is  but  the  successful  achieving  of  the  aim  on 
account  of  which  the  distinctions  in  question  were  insti- 
tuted. 

Thus  we  come  back  to  the  problem  of  logical  theory.  To 
take  the  distinctions  of  thought  and  fact,  etc.,  as  onto- 
logical,  as  inherently  fixed  in  the  make-up  of  the  structure 
of  being,  is  to  treat  the  actual  development  of  scientific 
inquiry  and  scientific  control  as  a  mere  subsidiary  topic 
ultimately  of  only  utilitarian  worth.  It  is  also  to  state  the 
terms  upon  which  thought  and  being  transact  business  in  a 
way  so  totally  alien  to  the  use  made  of  these  distinctions  in 
concrete  experience  as  to  create  a  problem  which  can  be  dis- 
cussed only  in  terms  of  itself — not  in  terms  of  the  conduct 
of  life — metaphysics  again  in  the  bad  sense  of  that  term. 
As  against  this,  the  problem  of  a  logic  which  aligns  itself 
with  the  origin  and  employ  of  reflective  thought  in  everyday 
life  and  in  critical  science,  is  to  follow  the  natural  history  of 
thinking  as  a  life-process  having  its  own  generating  antece- 
dents and  stimuli,  its  own  states  and  career,  and  its  own 
specific  objective  or  limit. 


14  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

This  point  of  view  makes  it  possible  for  logical  theory 
to  come  to  terms  with  psychology.1  When  logic  is  consid- 
ered as  having  to  do  with  the  wholesale  activity  of  thought 
per  se,  the  question  of  the  historic  process  by  which  this 
or  that  particular  thought  came  to  be,  of  how  its  object 
happens  to  present  itself  as  sensation,  or  perception,  or  con- 
ception, is  quite  irrelevant.  These  things  are  mere  tempo- 
ral accidents.  The  psychologist  (not  lifting  his  gaze  from 
the  realm  of  the  changeable)  may  find  in  them  matters  of 
interest.  His  whole  industry  is  just  with  natural  history — 
to  trace  series  of  psychical  events  as  they  mutually  excite 
and  inhibit  one  another.  But  the  logician,  we  are  told,  has 
a  deeper  problem  and  an  outlook  of  more  unbounded  horizon. 
He  deals  with  the  question  of  the  eternal  nature  of  thought 
and  its  eternal  validity  in  relation  to  an  eternal  reality.  He 
is  concerned,  not  with  genesis,  but  with  value,  not  with  a 
historic  cycle,  but  with  absolute  distinctions  and  relations. 

Still  the  query  haunts  us :  Is  this  so  in  truth  ?  Or  has 
the  logician  of  a  certain  type  arbitrarily  made  it  thus  by  tak- 
ing his  terms  apart  from  reference  to  the  specific  occasions 
in  which  they  arise  and  situations  in  which  they  function? 
If  the  latter,  then  the  very  denial  of  historic  relationship 
and  of  the  significance  of  historic  method,  is  indicative 
only  of  the  unreal  character  of  his  own  abstraction.  It 
means  in  effect  that  the  affairs  under  consideration  have 
been  isolated  from  the  conditions  in  which  alone  they  have 
determinable  meaning  and  assignable  worth.  It  is  aston- 
ishing that,  in  the  face  of  the  advance  of  the  evolutionary 
method  in  natural  science,  any  logician  can  persist  in  the 
assertion  of  a  rigid  difference  between  the  problem  of  origin 
and  of  nature;  between  genesis  and  analysis;  between  his- 
tory and  validity.  Such  assertion  simply  reiterates  as  final 

i  See  ANGELL,  "  The  Relations  of  Structural  and  Functional  Psychology  to  Phi- 
losophy," The  Decennial  Publications  of  the  University  of  Chicago,  Vol.  Ill  (1903), 
Part  II,  pp.  61-6,  70-72. 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY   15 

a  distinction  which  grew  up  and  had  meaning  in  pre-evolu- 
tionary  science.  It  asserts  against  the  most  marked  advance 
which  scientific  method  has  yet  made  a  survival  of  a  crude 
period  of  logical  scientific  procedure.  We  have  no  choice 
save  either  to  conceive  of  thinking  as  a  response  to  a  specific 
stimulus,  or  else  to  regard  it  as  something  "  in  itself,"  hav- 
ing just  in  and  of  itself  certain  traits,  elements,  and  laws.  If 
we  give  up  the  last  view,  we  must  take  the  former. 

The  entire  significance  of  the  evolutionary  method  in 
biology  and  social  history  is  that  every  distinct  organ,  struc- 
ture, or  formation,  every  grouping  of  cells  or  elements,  has 
to  be  treated  as  an  instrument  of  adjustment  or  adaptation 
to  a  particular  environing  situation.  Its  meaning,  its  char- 
acter, its  value,  is  known  when,  and  only  when,  it  is  consid- 
ered as  an  arrangement  for  meeting  the  conditions  involved 
in  some  specific  situation.  This  analysis  of  value  is  carried 
out  in  detail  by  tracing  successive  stages  of  development — 
by  endeavoring  to  locate  the  particular  situation  in  which 
each  structure  has  its  origin,  and  by  tracing  the  successive 
modifications  through  which,  in  response  to  changing  media, 
it  has  reached  its  present  conformation.1  To  persist  in  con- 
demning natural  history  from  the  standpoint  of  what  natural 
history  meant  before  it  identified  itself  with  an  evolutionary 
process  is  not  so  much  to  exclude  the  natural-history  stand- 
point from  philosophic  consideration  as  it  is  to  evince  igno- 
rance of  what  it  signifies. 

Psychology  as  the  natural  history  of  the  various  atti- 
tudes and  structures  through  which  experiencing  passes,  as 
an  account  of  the  conditions  under  which  this  or  that  state 
emerges,  and  of  the  way  in  which  it  influences,  by  stimula- 
tion or  inhibition,  production  of  other  states  or  conforma- 
tions of  consciousness,  is  indispensable  to  logical  evaluation, 
the  moment  we  treat  logical  theory  as  an  account  of  think- 

iSee  Philosophical  Revieio,  Vol.  XI,  pp.  117-20. 


16  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

ing  as  a  mode  of  adaptation  to  its  own  generating  condi- 
tions, and  judge  its  validity  by  reference  to  its  efficiency  in 
meeting  its  problems.  The  historical  point  of  view  describes 
the  sequence;  the  normative  follows  the  sequence  to  its 
conclusion,  and  then  turns  back  and  judges  each  historical 
step  by  viewing  it  in  reference  to  its  own  outcome.1 

In  the  course  of  changing  experience  we  keep  our  balance 
as  we  move  from  situations  of  an  affectional  quality  to  those 
which  are  practical  or  appreciative  or  reflective,  because  we 
bear  constantly  in  mind  the  context  in  which  any  particular 
distinction  presents  itself.  As  we  submit  each  characteristic 
function  and  situation  of  experience  to  our  gaze,  we  find  it 
has  a  dual  aspect.  Wherever  there  is  striving  there  are 
obstacles ;  wherever  there  is  'affection  there  are  persons  who 
are  attached;  wherever  there  is  doing  there  is  accomplish- 
ment; wherever  there  is  appreciation  there  is  value;  wher- 
ever there  is  thinking  there  is  material-in-question.  We 
keep  our  footing  as  we  move  from  one  attitude  to  another, 
from  one  characteristic  quality  to  another,  because  we  know 
the  position  occupied  in  the  whole  growth  by  the  particular 
function  in  which  we  are  engaged,  and  the  position  within 
the  function  of  the  particular  element  that  engages  us. 

The  distinction  between  each  attitude  and  function  and 
its  predecessor  and  successor  is  serial,  dynamic,  operative. 
The  distinctions  within  any  given  operation  or  function  are 
structural,  contemporaneous,  and  distributive.  Thinking 
follows,  we  will  say,  striving,  and  doing  follows  thinking. 
Each  in  the  fulfilment  of  its  own  function  inevitably  calls  out 
its  successor.  But  coincident,  simultaneous,  and  correspond- 
ent within  doing,  is  the  distinction  of  doer  and  of  deed; 
within  the  function  of  thought,  of  thinking  and  material 
thought  upon;  within  the  function  of  striving,  of  obstacle 

i  See  statements  regarding  the  psychological  and  the  logical  in  The  Child  and 
the  Curriculum,  pp.  28,  29. 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY   17 

of  aim,  of  means  and  end.  We  keep  our  paths  straight 
because  we  do  not  confuse  the  sequential,  efficient,  and 
functional  relationship  of  types  of  experience  with  the  con- 
temporaneous, correlative,  and  structural  distinctions  of  ele- 
ments within  a  given  function.  In  the  seeming  maze  of 
endless  confusion  and  unlimited  shif tings,  we  find  our  way 
by  the  means  of  the  stimulations  and  checks  occurring  within 
the  process  we  are  actually  engaged  with.  We  do  not  con- 
trast or  confuse  a  condition  or  state  which  is  an  element  in 
the  formation  of  one  operation  with  the  status  or  element 
which  is  one  of  the  distributive  terms  of  another  function. 
If  we  do,  we  have  at  once  an  insoluble,  because  meaningless, 
problem  upon  our  hands. 

Now  the  epistemological  logician  deliberately  shuts  him- 
self off  from  those  cues  and  checks  upon  which  the  plain 
man  instinctively  relies,  and  which  the  scientific  man 
deliberately  searches  for  and  adopts  as  constituting  his 
technique.  Consequently  he  is  likely  to  set  the  sort  of  object 
or  material  which  has  place  and  significance  only  in  one  of 
the  serial  functional  situations  of  experience,  over  against 
the  active  attitude  which  describes  part  of  the  structural 
constitution  of  another  situation;  or  with  equal  lack  of 
justification  to  assimilate  terms  characteristic  of  different 
stages  to  one  another.  He  sets  the  agent,  as  he  is  found 
in  the  intimacy  of  love  or  appreciation,  over  against  the 
externality  of  the  fact,  as  that  is  defined  within  the  reflect- 
ive process.  He  takes  the  material  which  thought  selects 
as  its  own  basis  for  further  procedure  to  be  identical  with 
the  significant  content  which  it  secures  for  itself  in  the 
successful  pursuit  of  its  aim;  and  this  in  turn  he  regards 
as  the  material  which  was  presented  at  the  outset,  and  whose 
peculiarities  were  the  express  means  of  awakening  thought. 
He  identifies  the  final  deposit  of  the  thought-function  with 
its  own  generating  antecedent,  and  then  disposes  of  the 


18  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

resulting  surd  by  reference  to  some  metaphysical  con- 
sideration, which  remains  when  logical  inquiry,  when  science 
(as  interpreted  by  him),  has  done  its  work.  He  does  this, 
not  because  he  prefers  confusion  to  order,  or  error  to  truth, 
but  simply  because,  when  the  chain  of  historic  sequence  is 
cut,  the  vessel  of  thought  is  afloat  to  veer  upon  a  sea  without 
soundings  or  moorings.  There  are  but  two  alternatives: 
either  there  is  an  object  "in  itself"  of  thought  "in  itself," 
or  else  there  are  a  series  of  values  which  vary  with  the  vary- 
ing functions  to  which  they  belong.  If  the  latter,  the  only 
way  these  values  can  be  defined  is  by  discriminating  the 
functions  to  which  they  belong.  It  is  only  conditions 
relative  to  a  specific  period  or  epoch  of  development  in  a 
cycle  of  experience  which*  enables  one  to  tell  what  to  do 
next,  or  to  estimate  the  value  and  meaning  of  what  is  already 
done.  And  the  epistemological  logician,  in  choosing  to  take 
his  question  as  one  of  thought  which  has  its  own  form  just 
as  "  thought,"  apart  from  the  limits  of  the  special  work  it  has 
to  do,  has  deprived  himself  of  these  supports  and  stays. 

The  problem  of  logic  has  a  more  general  and  a  more 
specific  phase.  In  its  generic  form,  it  deals  with  this  ques- 
tion :  How  does  one  type  of  functional  situation  and  attitude 
in  experience  pass  out  of  and  into  another;  for  example,  the 
technological  or  utilitarian  into  the  aesthetic,  the  aesthetic 
into  the  religious,  the  religious  into  the  scientific,  and  this 
into  the  socio-ethical  and  so  on  ?  The  more  specific  question 
is:  How  does  the  particular  functional  situation  termed  the 
reflective  behave?  How  shall  we  describe  it?  What  in 
detail  are  its  diverse  contemporaneous  distinctions,  or  divi- 
sions of  labor,  its  correspondent  statuses;  in  what  specific 
ways  do  these  operate  with  reference  to  each  other  so  as 
to  effect  the  specific  aim  which  is  proposed  by  the  needs  of 
the  affair? 

This  chapter  may  be  brought  to  conclusion  by  reference 


GENERAL  PROBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY        19 

to  the  more  alternate  value  of  the  logic  of  experience,  of 
logic  taken  in  its  wider  sense ;  that  is,  as  an  account  of  the 
sequence  of  the  various  typical  functions  or  situations  of 
experience  in  their  determining  relations  to  one  another. 
Philosophy,  defined  as  such  a  logic,  makes  no  pretense  to 
be  an  account  of  a  closed  and  finished  universe.  Its  business 
is  not  to  secure  or  guarantee  any  particular  reality  or  value. 
Per  contra,  it  gets  the  significance  of  a  method.  The  right 
relationship  and  adjustment  of  the  various  typical  phases  of 
experience  to  one  another  is  a  problem  felt  in  every  depart- 
ment of  life.  Intellectual  rectification  and  control  of  these 
adjustments  cannot  fail  to  reflect  itself  in  an  added  clearness 
and  security  on  the  practical  side.  It  may  be  that  general 
logic  can  not  become  an  instrument  in  the  immediate  direc- 
tion of  the  activities  of  science  or  art  or  industry ;  but  it  is 
of  value  in  criticising  and  in  organizing  the  tools  of 
immediate  research  in  these  lines.  It  also  has  direct  sig- 
nificance in  the  valuation  for  social  or  life-purposes  of  results 
achieved  in  particular  branches.  Much  of  the  immediate 
business  of  life  is  badly  done  because  we  do  not  know  in 
relation  to  its  congeners  the  organic  genesis  and  outcome 
of  the  work  that  occupies  us.  The  manner  and  degree  of 
appropriation  of  the  values  achieved  in  various  departments 
of  social  interest  and  vocation  are  partial  and  faulty  because 
we  are  not  clear  as  to  the  due  rights  and  responsibilities  of 
one  function  of  experience  in  reference  to  others. 

The  value  of  research  for  social  progress;  the  bearing  of 
psychology  upon  educational  procedure ;  the  mutual  relations 
of  fine  and  industrial  art;  the  question  of  the  extent  and 
nature  of  specialization  in  science  in  comparison  with  the 
claims  of  applied  science ;  the  adjustment  of  religious  aspira- 
tions to  scientific  statements ;  the  justification  of  a  refined 
culture  for  a  few  in  face  of  economic  insufficiency  for  the 
mass — such  are  a  few  of  the  many  social  questions  whose 


20  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

final  answer  depends  upon  the  possession  and  use  of  a  general 
logic  of  experience  as  a  method  of  inquiry  and  interpreta- 
tion. I  do  not  say  that  headway  cannot  be  made  in  such 
questions  apart  from  the  method  indicated:  a  logic  of 
genetic  experience.  But  unless  we  have  a  critical  and 
assured  view  of  the  juncture  in  which  and  with  reference  to 
which  a  given  attitude  or  interest  arises,  unless  we  know  the 
service  it  is  thereby  called  upon  to  perform  and  hence  the 
organs  or  methods  by  which  it  best  functions  in  that  service, 
our  progress  is  impeded  and  irregular.  We  take  a  part  for  a 
whole,  a  means  for  an  end,  or  attack  wholesale  some  other 
interest  because  it  interferes  with  the  deified  sway  of  the 
one  we  have  selected  as  ultimate.  A  clear  and  comprehen- 
sive consensus  of  social. conviction,  and  a  consequent  con- 
centrated and  economical  direction  of  effort,  are  assured  only 
as  there  is  some  way  of  locating  the  position  and  rOle  of  each 
typical  interest  and  occupation  in  experience.  The  domain 
of  opinion  is  one  of  conflict ;  its  rule  is  arbitrary  and  costly. 
Only  intellectual  method  affords  a  substitute  for  opinion. 
The  general  logic  of  experience  can  alone  do  for  the  region 
of  social  values  and  aims  what  the  natural  sciences  after  cen- 
turies of  struggle  are  doing  for  activity  in  the  physical 
realm. 

This  dees  not  mean  that  systems  of  philosophy  which 
have  attempted  to  state  the  nature  either  of  thought  and  of 
reality  at  large,  apart  from  limits  of  particular  crises  in  the 
growth  of  experience,  have  been  worthless — though  it  does 
mean  that  their  industry  has  been  somewhat  misapplied, 
The  unfolding  of  metaphysical  theory  has  made  large 
contributions  to  positive  evaluations  of  the  typical  situations 
and  relationships  of  experience  —  even  when  its  conscious 
intention  has  been  quite  otherwise.  Every  system  of  phi- 
losophy is  itself  a  mode  of  reflection;  consequently  (if  our 
main  contention  be  true),  it  too  has  been  evoked  out  of 


GENERAL  PBOBLEM  OF  LOGICAL  THEORY        21 

specific  social  antecedents,  and  has  had  its  use  as  a  response 
to  them.  It  has  effected  something  in  modifying  the 
situation  within  which  it  found  its  origin.  It  'may  not 
have  solved  the  problem  which  it  consciously  put  itself; 
in  many  cases  we  may  freely  admit  that  the  question  put 
has  afterward  been  found  to  be  so  wrongly  put  as  to  be 
insoluble.  Yet  exactly  the  same  thing  is  true,  in  precisely 
the  same  sense,  in  the  history  of  science.  For  this  reason, 
if  for  no  other,  it  is  impossible  for  the  scientific  man  to 
cast  the  first  stone  at  the  philosopher. 

The  progress  of  science  in  any  branch  continually  brings 
with  it  a  realization  that  problems  in  their  previous  form  of 
statement  are  insoluble  because  put  in  terms  of  unreal  con- 
ditions; because  the  real  conditions  have  been  mixed  up 
with  mental  artifacts  or  misconstructions.  Every  science  is 
continually  learning  that  its  supposed  solutions  are  only 
apparent,  because  the  "solution"  solves,  not  the  actual  prob- 
lem, but  one  which  has  been  made  up.  But  the  very  putting 
of  the  question,  the  very  giving  of  the  wrong  answer,  in- 
duces modification  of  existing  intellectual  habits,  stand- 
points, and  aims.  Wrestling  with  the  problem,  there  is 
evolution  of  new  forms  of  technique  to  control  its  treatment, 
there  is  search  for  new  facts,  institution  of  new  types  of 
experimentation;  there  is  gain  in  the  methodic  control  of 
experience.  And  all  this  is  progress.  It  is  only  the  worn- 
out  cynic,  the  devitalized  sensualist,  and  the  fanatical  dog- 
matist who  interpret  the  continuous  change  of  science  as 
proving  that,  since  each  successive  statement  is  wrong,  the 
whole  record  is  error  and  folly;  and  that  the  present  truth 
is  only  the  error  not  yet  found  out.  Such  draw  the  moral 
of  caring  naught  for  all  these  things,  or  of  flying  to  some 
external  authority  which  will  deliver  once  for  all  the  fixed 
and  unchangeable  truth.  But  historic  philosophy  even  in 
its  aberrant  forms  has  proved  a  factor  in  the  valuation  of 


22  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

experience ;  it  has  brought  problems  to  light,  it  has  provoked 
intellectual  conflicts  without  which  values  are  only  nominal ; 
even  through  its  would-be  absolutistic  isolations,  it  has  se- 
cured recognition  of  mutual  dependencies  and  reciprocal 
reinforcements.  Yet  if  it  can  define  its  work  more  clearly,  it 
can  concentrate  its  energy  upon  its  own  characteristic  prob- 
lem: the  genesis  and  functioning  in  experience  of  various 
typical  interests  and  occupations  with  reference  to  one 
another. 


II 

THOUGHT  AND  ITS  SUBJECT-MATTER :    THE  ANTECEDENT 
CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THE  THOUGHT-FUNCTION 

WE  have  discriminated  logic  in  its  wider  sense,  concerned 
with  the  sequence  of  characteristic  functions  and  attitudes 
in  experience,  from  logic  in  its  stricter  meaning,  concerned 
in  particular  with  description  and  interpretation  of  the  func- 
tion of  reflective  thought.  We  must  avoid  yielding  to  the 
temptation  of  identifying  logic  with  either  of  these  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  other ;  or  of  supposing  that  it  is  possible  to 
isolate  one  finally  from  the  other.  The  more  detailed  treat- 
ment of  the  organs  and  methods  of  reflection  cannot  be 
carried  on  with  security  save  as  we  have  a  correct  idea  of 
the  historic  position  of  reflection  in  the  evolving  of  expe- 
rience. Yet  it  is  impossible  to  determine  this  larger  placing, 
save  as  we  have  a  defined  and  analytic,  as  distinct  from 
a  merely  vague  and  gross,  view  of  what  we  mean  by  reflec- 
tion— what  is  its  actual  constitution.  It  is  necessary  to 
work  back  and  forth  between  the  larger  and  the  narrower 
fields,  transforming  every  increment  upon  one  side  into  a 
method  of  work  upon  the  other,  and  thereby  testing  it. 
The  apparent  confusion  of  existing  logical  theory,  its  uncer- 
tainty as  to  its  own  bounds  and  limits,  its  tendency  to  oscillate 
from  larger  questions  of  the  inherent  worth  of  judgment  and 
validity  of  inference  over  to  details  of  scientific  technique, 
and  to  translation  of  distinctions  of  formal  logic  into  terms 
of  an  investigatory  or  verificatory  process,  are  indications  of 
the  need  of  this  double  movement. 

In  the  next  three  chapters  it  is  proposed  to  take  up  some 
of  the  considerations  that  lie  on  the  borderland  between  the 

23 


24  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

larger  and  the  narrower  conceptions  of  logical  theory.  I 
shall  discuss  the  locus  of  the  function  of  thought,  so  far  as 
such  locus  enables  us  to  select  and  characterize  some  of  the 
most  fundamental  distinctions,  or  divisions  of  labor,  within 
the  reflective  process.  In  taking  up  the  problem  of  the 
subject-matter  of  thought,  I  shall  try  to  make  clear  that  it 
assumes  three  quite  distinct  forms  according  to  the  epochal 
moment  reached  in  transformation  of  experience  ;  and  that 
continual  confusion  and  inconsistency  are  introduced  when 
these  respective  meanings  are  not  identified  and  described 
according  to  their  respective  geneses  and  places.  I  shall 
attempt  to  show  that  we  must  consider  subject-matter  from 
the  standpoint,  first,  of  the  antecedents  or  conditions  that 
evoke  thought ;  second,  of  .the  datum  or  immediate  material 
presented  to  thought;  and,  third,  of  the  proper  content  of 
thought.  Of  these  three  distinctions  the  first,  that  of  ante- 
cedent and  stimulus,  clearly  refers  to  the  situation  that  is 
immediately  prior  to  the  thought -function  as  such.  The 
second,  that  of  datum  or  immediately  given  matter,  refers  to 
a  distinction  which  is  made  within  the  thought-process  as  a 
part  of  and  for  the  sake  of  its  own  modus  operandi.  It  is  a 
status  in  the  scheme  of  thinking.  The  third,  that  of  content 
or  object,  refers  to  the  progress  actually  made  in  any  thought- 
function  ;  the  material  which  is  organized  into  the  thought- 
situation,  so  far  as  this  has  fulfilled  its  purpose.  It  goes 
without  saying  that  these  are  to  be  discriminated  as  stages  of 
a  life-process  in  the  natural  history  of  experience,  not  as 
ready-made  or  ontological ;  it  is  contended  that,  save  as  they 
are  differentiated  in  connection  with  well-defined  historical 
stages,  they  are  either  lumped  off  as  equivalents,  or  else 
treated  as  absolute  divisions — or  as  each  by  turns,  accord- 
ing to  the  exigencies  of  the  particular  argument.  In  fact, 
this  chapter  will  get  at  the  matter  of  preliminary  conditions 
of  thought  indirectly  rather  than  directly,  by  indicating  the 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   25 

contradictory  positions  into  which  one  of  the  most  vigorous 
and  acute  of  modern  logicians,  Lotze,  has  been  forced  through 
failing  to  define  logical  distinctions  in  terms  of  the  history 
of  readjustment  of  experience,  and  therefore  endeavoring  to 
interpret  certain  notions  as  absolute  instead  of  as  periodic 
and  methodological. 

Before  passing  directly  to  the  exposition  and  criticism  of 
Lotze,  it  will  be  well,  however,  to  take  the  matter  in  a  some- 
what freer  way.  We  cannot  approach  logical  inquiry  in  a 
wholly  direct  and  uncompromised  manner.  Of  necessity  we 
bring  to  it  certain  distinctions  —  distinctions  partly  the  out- 
come of  concrete  experience;  partly  due  to  the  logical 
theory  which  has  got  embodied  in  ordinary  language  and  in 
current  intellectual  habits ;  partly*results  of  deliberate  scien- 
tific and  philosophic  inquiry.  These  more  or  less  ready- 
made  results  are  resources ;  they  are  the  only  weapons  with 
which  we  can  attack  the  new  problem.  Yet  they  are  full 
of  unexamined  assumptions;  they  commit  us  to  all  sorts 
of  logically  predetermined  conclusions.  In  one  sense  our 
study  of  the  new  subject-matter,  let  us  say  logical  theory,  is 
in  truth  only  a  review,  a  re-testing  and  criticising  of  the 
intellectual  standpoints  and  methods  which  we  bring  with 
us  to  the  study. 

Everyone  comes  with  certain  distinctions  already  made 
between  the  subjective  and  the  objective,  between  the  physi- 
cal and  the  psychical,  between  the  intellectual  and  the  factual. 
(1)  We  have  learned  to  regard  the  region  of  emotional  dis- 
turbance, of  uncertainty  and  aspiration,  as  belonging  some- 
how peculiarly  to  ourselves;  we  have  learned  to  set  over 
against  this  a  world  of  observation  and  of  valid  thought  as 
something  unaffected  by  our  moods,  hopes,  fears,  and  opin- 
ions. (2)  We  have  also  come  to  distinguish  between  what  is 
immediately  present  in  our  experience  and  the  past  and  the 
future;  we  contrast  the  realms  of  memory  and  anticipation 


26  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

of  sense-perception;  the  given  with  the  ideal.  (3)  We  are 
confirmed  in  a  habit  of  distinguishing  between  what  we 
call  actual  fact  and  our  mental  attitude  toward  that  fact  — 
the  attitude  of  surmise  or  wonder  or  reflective  investigation. 
While  one  of  the  aims  of  logical  theory  is  precisely  to  make 
us  critically  conscious  of  the  significance  and  bearing  of 
these  various  distinctions,  to  change  them  from  ready-made 
assumptions  into  controlled  constructs,  our  mental  habits  are 
so  set  that  they  tend  to  have  their  own  way  with  us;  and 
we  read  into  logical  theory  conceptions  that  were  formed 
before  we  had  even  dreamed  of  the  logical  undertaking 
which  after  all  has  for  its  business  to  assign  to  the  terms  in 
question  their  proper  meaning. 

We  find  in  Lotze  an  unusually  explicit  inventory  of  these 
various  preliminary  distinctions;  and  an  unusually  serious 
effort  to  deal  with  the  problems  which  arise  from  introducing 
them  into  the  structure  of  logical  theory.  (1)  He  expressly 
separates  the  matter  of  logical  worth  from  that  of  psycholo- 
gical genesis.  He  consequently  abstracts  the  subject-matter 
of  logic  as  such  wholly  from  the  question  of  historic  locus 
and  situs.  (2)  He  agrees  with  common-sense  in  holding  that 
logical  thought  is  reflective  and  thus  presupposes  a  given 
material.  He  occupies  himself  with  the  nature  of  the  ante- 
cedent conditions.  (3)  He  wrestles  with  the  problem  of 
how  a  material  formed  prior  to  thought  and  irrespective  of 
it  can  yet  afford  it  stuff  upon  which  to  exercise  itself.  (4) 
He  expressly  raises  the  question  of  how  thought  working 
independently  and  from  without  upon  a  foreign  material  can 
shape  the  latter  into  results  which  are  valid — that  is, 
objective. 

If  his  discussion  is  successful ;  if  Lotze  can  provide  the 
intermediaries  which  span  the  gulf  between  an  independent 
thought-material  and  an  independent  thought-activity;  if 
he  can  show  that  the  question  of  the  origin  of  thought- 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   27 

material  and  of  thought-activity  is  irrelevant  to  the  question 
of  its  worth,  we  shall  have  to  surrender  the  position  already 
taken.  But  if  we  find  that  Lotze's  elaborations  only  elaborate 
the  same  fundamental  difficulty,  presenting  it  now  in  this 
light  and  now  in  that,  but  never  effecting  more  than  pre- 
senting the  problem  as  if  it  were  its  own  solution,  we  shall 
be  confirmed  in  our  idea  of  the  need  of  considering  logical 
questions  from  a  different  point  of  view.  If  we  find  that, 
whatever  his  formal  treatment,  he  always,  as  matter  of 
fact,  falls  back  upon  some  organized  situation  or  function  as 
the  source  of  both  the  specific  thought-material  and  the 
specific  thought-activity  in  correspondence  with  each  other, 
we  shall  have  in  so  far  an  elucidation  and  even  a  corrobora- 
tion  of  our  theory. 

1.  We  begin  with  the  question  of  the  material  antecedents 
of  thought  —  antecedents  which  condition  reflection,  and 
which  call  it  out  as  reaction  or  response,  by  giving  it  its  cue. 
Lotze  differs  from  many  logicians  of  the  same  type  in 
affording  us  an  explicit  account  of  these  antecedents.  The 
ultimate  material  antecedents  of  thought  are  found  in  impres- 
sions, which  are  due  to  external  objects  as  stimuli.  Taken 
in  themselves,  these  impressions  are  mere  psychical  states  or 
events.  They  exist  in  us  side  by  side,  or  one  after  the  other, 
according  as  the  objects  which  excite  them  operate  simul- 
taneously or  successively.  The  occurrence  of  these  various 
psychical  states  is  not,  however,  entirely  dependent  upon  the 
presence  of  the  exciting  thing.  After  a  state  has  once  been 
excited,  it  gets  the  power  of  reawakening  other  states  which 
have  accompanied  it  or  followed  it.  The  associative  mechan- 
ism of  revival  plays  a  part.  If  we  had  a  complete  knowl- 
edge of  both  the  stimulating  object  and  its  effects,  and  of 
the  details  of  the  associative  mechanism,  we  should  be  able 
from  given  data  to  predict  the  whole  course  of  any  given 
train  or  current  of  ideas  (for  the  impressions  as  conjoined 


28  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

simultaneously  or  successively  become  ideas  and  a  current  of 
ideas). 

Taken  in  itself,  a  sensation  or  impression  is  nothing  but 
a  "state  of  our  consciousness,  a  mood  of  ourselves."  Any 
given  current  of  ideas  is  a  necessary  sequence  of  existences 
(just  as  necessary  as  any  succession  of  material  events), 
happening  in  some  particular  sensitive  soul  or  organism. 
"Just  because,  under  their  respective  conditions,  every 
such  series  of  ideas  hangs  together  by  the  same  necessity 
and  law  as  every  other,  there  would  be  no  ground  for  mak- 
ing any  such  distinction  of  value  as  that  between  truth 
and  untruth,  thus  placing  one  group  in  opposition  to  all  the 
others."  l 

2.  Thus  far,  as  the  last -quotation  clearly  indicates,  there 
is  no  question  of  reflective  thought,  and  hence  no  question 
of  logical  theory.    But  further  examination  reveals  a  peculiar 
property  of  the  current  of  ideas.     Some  ideas  are  merely 
coincident,  while  others  may  be  termed  coherent.     That  is 
to  say,  the  exciting  causes  of  some  of  our  simultaneous  and 
successive  ideas  really  belong  together;  while  in  other  cases 
they  simply  happen  to  act  at  the  same  time,  without  there 
being  a  real  connection  between  them.     By  the  associative 
mechanism,  however,  both  the  coherent  and  the  merely  coin- 
cident combinations  recur.      The  first  type  of   recurrence 
supplies  positive  material  for  knowledge  ;  the  second  gives 
occasion  for  error. 

3.  It  is  a  peculiar  mixture  of  the  coincident  and  the 
coherent    which   sets   the    peculiar    problem   of    reflective 
thought.     The  business  of  thought  is  to  recover  and  con- 
firm   the   coherent,    the   really    connected,    adding   to   its 
reinstatement    an    accessory   justifying   notion  of   the  real 
ground  of  coherence,  while  it  eliminates  the  coincident  as 

i  LOTZE,  Logic  (translation,  Oxford,  1888),  Vol.  I,  p.  2.  For  the  preceding  exposi- 
tion see  Vol.  I,  pp.  1,  2, 13, 14,  37,  38 ;  also  Microkosmus,  Book  V,  chap.  4. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   29 

such.  While  the  mere  current  of  ideas  is  something  which 
just  happens  within  us,  the  process  of  elimination  and  of 
confirmation  by  means  of  statement  of  real  ground  and 
basis  of  connection  is  an  activity  which  mind  as  such  exer- 
cises. It  is  this  distinction  which  marks  off  thought  as 
activity  from  any  psychical  event  and  from  the  associative 
mechanism  as  receptive  happenings.  One  is  concerned 
with  mere  de  facto  coexistences  and  sequences ;  the  other 
with  the  worth  of  these  combinations.1 

Consideration  of  the  peculiar  work  of  thought  in  going 
over,  sorting  out,  and  determining  various  ideas  according 
to  a  standard  of  value  will  occupy  us  in  our  next  chapter. 
Here  we  are  concerned  with  the  material  antecedents  of 
thought  as  they  are  described  by  Lotze.  At  first  glance,  he 
seems  to  propound  a  satisfactory  theory.  He  avoids  the 
extravagancies  of  transcendental  logic,  which  assumes  that 
all  the  matter  of  experience  is  determined  from  the  very 
start  by  rational  thought;  and  he  also  avoids  the  pitfall 
of  purely  empirical  logic,  which  makes  no  distinction 
between  the  mere  occurrence  and  association  of  ideas  and 
the  real  worth  and  validity  of  the  various  conjunctions  thus 
produced.  He  allows  unreflective  experience,  defined  in 
terms  of  sensations  and  their  combinations,  to  provide  ma- 
terial conditions  for  thinking,  while  he  reserves  for  thought 
a  distinctive  work  and  dignity  of  its  own.  Sense-experience 
furnishes  the  antecedents;  thought  has  to  introduce  and 
develop  systematic  connection — rationality. 

A  further  analysis  of  Lotze's  treatment  may,  however, 
lead  us  to  believe  that  his  statement  is  riddled  through  and 
through  with  inconsistencies  and  self-contradictions;  that, 
indeed,  any  one  part  of  it  can  be  maintained  only  by  the 
denial  of  some  other  portion. 

1.  The  impression  is  the  ultimate  antecedent  in  its  purest 

1  LOTZE,  Logic,  Vol.  I,  pp.  6,  7. 


30  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

or  crudest  form  (according  to  the  angle  from  which  one 
views  it).  It  is  that  which  has  never  felt,  for  good  or  for  bad, 
the  influence  of  thought.  Combined  into  ideas,  these  impres- 
sions stimulate  or  arouse  the  activities  of  thought,  which 
are  forthwith  directed  upon  them.  As  the  recipient  of  the 
activity  which  they  have  excited  and  brought  to  bear  upon 
themselves,  they  furnish  also  the  material  content  of  thought 
—  its  actual  stuff.  As  Lotze  says  over  and  over  again:  "It 
is  the  relations  themselves  already  subsisting  between 
impressions,  when  we  become  conscious  of  them,  by  which 
the  action  of  thought  which  is  never  anything  but  reaction, 
is  attracted;  and  this  action  consists  merely  in  interpreting 
relations  which  we  find  existing  between  our  passive  impres- 
sions into  aspects  of  the  matter  of  impressions."1  And 
again:2  "Thought  can  make  no  difference  where  it  finds 
none  already  in  the  matter  of  the  impressions."  And 
again:3  "The  possibility  and  the  success  of  thought's  pro- 
cedure depends  upon  this  original  constitution  and  organi- 
zation of  the  whole  world  of  ideas,  a  constitution  which, 
though  not  necessary  in  thought,  is  all  the  more  necessary 
to  make  thinking  possible." 

The  impressions  and  ideas  play  a  versatile  r6le ;  they  now 
assume  the  part  of  ultimate  antecedents  and  provocative 
conditions ;  6f  crude  material ;  and  somehow,  when  arranged, 
of  content  for  thought.  This  very  versatility  awakens 
suspicion. 

While  the  impression  is  merely  subjective  and  a  bare  state 
of  our  own  consciousness,  yet  it  is  determined,  both  as  to  its 
existence  and  as  to  its  relation  to  other  similar  existences, 
by  external  objects  as  stimuli,  if  not  as  causes.  It  is  also 
determined  by  a  psychical  mechanism  so  thoroughly  objec- 
tive or  regular  in  its  workings  as  to  give  the  same  necessary 

1  LOTZE,  Logic  (translation,  Oxford,  1888),  Vol.  I,  p.  25. 

2  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  36.  3  ibid. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   31 

character  to  the  current  of  ideas  that  is  possessed  by  any  phys- 
ical sequence.  Thus  that  which  is  "  nothing  but  a  state  of 
our  consciousness  "  turns  out  straightway  to  be  a  specifically 
determined  objective  fact  in  a  system  of  facts. 

That  this  absolute  transformation  is  a  contradiction  is  no 
clearer  than  that  just  such  a  contradiction  is  indispensable 
to  Lotze.  If  the  impressions  were  nothing  but  states  of 
consciousness,  moods  of  ourselves,  bare  psychical  existences, 
it  is  sure  enough  that  we  should  never  even  know  them  to  be 
such,  to  say  nothing  of  conserving  them  as  adequate  condi- 
tions and  material  for  thought.  It  is  only  by  treating  them 
as  real  facts  in  a  real  world,  and  only  by  carrying  over  into 
them,  in  some  assumed  and  unexplained  way,  the  capacity 
of  representing  the  cosmic  facts  which  arouse  them,  that 
impressions  or  ideas  come  in  any  sense  within  the  scope  of 
thought.  But  if  the  antecedents  are  really  impressions-in- 
their-objective-setting,  then  Lotze's  whole  way  of  distin- 
guishing thought- worth  from  mere  existence  or  event  without 
objective  significance  must  be  radically  modified. 

The  implication  that  impressions  have  actually  a  matter 
or  quality  or  meaning  of  their  own  becomes  explicit  when 
we  refer  to  Lotze's  theory  that  the  immediate  antecedent  of 
thought  is  found  in  the  matter  of  ideas.  When  thought  is 
said  to  "  take  cognizance  of  relations  which  its  own  activity 
does  not  originate,  but  which  have  been  prepared  for  it  by 
the  unconscious  mechanism  of  the  psychic  states,"  1  the  attri- 
bution of  objective  content,  of  reference  and  meaning  to 
ideas,  is  unambiguous.  The  idea  forms  a  most  convenient 
half-way  house  for  Lotze.  On  one  hand,  as  absolutely  prior 
to  thought,  as  material  antecedent  condition,  it  is  merely 
psychical,  a  bald  subjective  event.  But  as  subject-matter  for 
thought,  as  antecedent  which  affords  stuff  for  thought's  exer- 
cise, it  is  meaning,  characteristic  quality  of  content. 

i  MicroTcosmus,  Book  V,  chap.  4. 


32  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

Although  we  have  been  told  that  the  impression  is  a  mere 
receptive  irritation  without  participation  of  mental  activity, 
we  are  not  surprised,  in  view  of  this  capacity  of  ideas,  to  learn 
that  the  mind  actually  has  a  determining  share  in  both  the  re- 
ception of  stimuli  and  in  their  further  associative  combina- 
tions. The  subject  always  enters  into  the  presentation  of  any 
mental  object,  even  the  sensational,  to  say  nothing  of  the  per- 
ceptional and  the  imaged.  The  perception  of  a  given  state  of 
things  is  possible  only  on  the  assumption  that  "  the  perceiv- 
ing subject  is  at  once  enabled  and  compelled  by  its  own 
nature  to  combine  the  excitations  which  reach  it  from 
objects  into  those  forms  which  it  is  to  perceive  in  the  objects, 
and  which  it  supposes  itself  simply  to  receive  from  them." ] 

It  is  only  by  continual  transition  from  impression  and 
ideas  as  mental  states  and  events  to  ideas  as  cognitive  (or 
logical)  objects  or  contents,  that  Lotze  bridges  the  gulf  from 
bare  exciting  antecedent  to  concrete  material  conditions  of 
thought.  This  contradiction,  again,  is  necessary  to  Lotze's 
standpoint.  To  set  out  frankly  with  "  meanings  "  as  ante- 
cedents would  demand  reconsideration  of  the  whole  view- 
point, which  supposes  that  the  difference  between  the  logical 
and  its  antecedent  is  a  matter  of  the  difference  between  worth 
and  mere  existence  or  occurrence.  It  would  indicate  that 
since  meaning  or  value  is  already  there,  the  task  of  thought 
must  be  that  of  the  transformation  or  reconstruction  of  worth 
through  an  intermediary  process  of  valuation.  On  the  other 
hand,  to  stick  by  the  standpoint  of  mere  existence  is  not  to 
get  anything  which  can  be  called  even  antecedent  of  thought. 

2.  Why  is  there  a  task  of  transformation?  Considera- 
tion of  the  material  in  its  function  of  evoking  thought,  giv- 
ing it  its  cue,  will  serve  to  complete  the  picture  of  the  con- 
tradiction and  of  the  real  facts.  It  is  the  conflict  between 
ideas  as  merely  coincident  and  ideas  as  coherent  that  con- 

1  Logic,  Vol.  II,  p.  235 ;  see  the  whole  discussion,  §§  325  through  327. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   33 

stitutes  the  need  which  provokes  the  response  of  thought. 
Here  Lotze  vibrates  (a)  between  considering  coincidence  and 
coherence  as  both  affairs  of  existence  of  psychical  events; 
(6)  considering  coincidence  as  purely  psychical  and  coher- 
ence as  at  least  quasi-logical,  and  (c)  the  inherent  logic  which 
makes  them  both  determinations  within  the  sphere  of  reflect- 
ive thought.  In  strict  accordance  with  his  own  premises, 
coincidence  and  coherence  both  ought  to  be  mere  peculiarities 
of  the  current  of  ideas  as  events  within  ourselves.  But  so 
taken  the  distinction  becomes  absolutely  meaningless. 
Events  do  not  cohere ;  at  the  most  certain  sets  of  them  happen 
more  or  less  frequently  than  other  sets ;  the  only  intelligible 
difference  is  one  of  repetition  of  coincidence.  And  even  this 
attributes  to  an  event  the  supernatural  trait  of  reappearing 
after  it  has  disappeared.  Even  coincidence  has  to  be 
defined  in  terms  of  relation  of  the  objects  which  are  sup- 
posed to  excite  the  psychical  events  that  happen  together. 

As  recent  psychological  discussion  has  made  clear  enough, 
it  is  the  matter,  meaning,  or  content,  of  ideas  that  is  asso- 
ciated, not  the  ideas  as  states  or  existences.  Take  such  an 
idea  as  sun-revolving-about-earth.  We  may  say  it  means 
the  conjunction  of  various  sense-impressions,  but  it  is  conjunc- 
tion, or  mutual  reference,  of  attributes  that  we  have  in  mind 
in  the  assertion.  It  is  absolutely  certain  that  our  psychical 
image  of  the  sun  is  not  psychically  engaged  in  revolving 
about  our  psychical  image  of  the  earth.  It  would  be 
amusing  if  such  were  the  case;  theaters  and  all  dramatic 
representations  would  be  at  a  discount.  In  truth,  sun- 
revolving-about-earth  is  a  single  meaning  or  idea;  it  is  a 
unified  subject-matter  within  which  certain  distinctions  of 
reference  appear.  It  is  concerned  with  what  we  intend  when 
we  think  earth  and  sun,  and  think  them  in  their  relation  to 
each  other.  It  is  really  a  specification  or  direction  of  how 
to  think  when  we  have  occasion  to  think  a  certain  subject- 


34  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

matter.  To  treat  the  origin  of  this  mutual  reference  as  if  it 
were  simply  a  case  of  conjunction  of  ideas  produced  by  con- 
ditions of  original  psycho-physical  irritation  and  association 
is  a  profound  case  of  the  psychological  fallacy.  We  may, 
indeed,  analyze  an  experience  and  find  that  it  had  its  origin 
in  certain  conditions  of  the  sensitive  organism,  in  certain 
peculiarities  of  perception  and  of  association,  and  hence  con- 
clude that  the  belief  involved  in  it  was  not  justified  by  the 
facts  themselves.  But  the  significance  of  the  belief  in  sun- 
revolving-about-earth  as  an  item  of  the  experience  of  those 
who  meant  it,  consisted  precisely  in  the  fact  that  it  was  taken 
not  as  a  mere  association  of  feelings,  but  as  a  definite  portion 
of  the  whole  structure  of  objective  experience,  guaranteed 
by  other  parts  of  the  fabric,  and  lending  its  support  and 
giving  its  tone  to  them.  It  was  to  them  part  of  the  experi- 
ence-frame of  things — of  the  real  universe. 

Put  the  other  way,  if  such  an  instance  meant  a  mere  con- 
junction of  psychical  states,  there  would  be  in  it  absolutely 
nothing  to  evoke  thought.  Each  idea  as  event,  as  Lotze 
himself  points  out  (Vol.  I,  p.  2),  may  be  regarded  as  ade- 
quately and  necessarily  determined  to  the  place  it  occupies. 
There  is  absolutely  no  question  on  the  side  of  events  of  mere 
coincidence  versus  genuine  connection.  As  event,  it  is  there 
and  it  belongs  there.  We  cannot  treat  something  as  at  once 
bare  fact  of  existence  and  as  problematic  subject-matter  of 
logical  inquiry.  To  take  the  reflective  point  of  view  is  to 
consider  the  matter  in  a  totally  new  light ;  as  Lotze  says,  it  is 
to  raise  the  question  of  rightful  claims  to  a  position  or  relation. 

The  point  becomes  clearer  when  we  contrast  coincidence 
with  connection.  To  consider  coincidence  as  simply  psy- 
chical, and  coherence  as  at  least  quasi-logical,  is  to  put  the 
two  on  such  different  bases  that  no  question  of  contrasting 
them  can  arise.  The  coincidence  which  precedes  a  valid  or 
grounded  coherence  (the  conjunction  which  as  coexistence 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION  35 

of  objects  and  sequence  of  acts  is  perfectly  adequate)  never 
is,  as  antecedent,  the  coincidence  which  is  set  over  against 
coherence.  The  side-by-sideness  of  books  on  my  book- 
shelf, the  succession  of  noises  that  rise  through  my  window, 
do  not  as  such  trouble  me  logically.  They  do  not  appear  as 
errors  or  even  as  problems.  One  coexistence  is  just  as  good 
as  any  other  until  some  new  point  of  view,  or  new  end,  pre- 
sents itself.  If  it  is  a  question  of  the  convenience  of  arrange- 
ment of  books,  then  the  value  of  their  present  collocation 
becomes  a  problem.  Then  I  may  contrast  their  present  bare 
conjunction  with  a  scheme  of  possible  coherence.  If  I  regard 
the  sequence  of  noises  as  a  case  of  articulate  speech,  their 
order  becomes  important — it  is  a  problem  to  be  determined. 
The  inquiry  whether  a  given  combination  means  only  appar- 
ent or  real  connection,  shows  that  reflective  inquiry  is  already 
going  on.  Does  this  phase  of  the  moon  really  mean  rain, 
or  does  it  just  happen  that  the  rain-storm  comes  when  the 
moon  has  reached  this  phase?  To  ask  such  questions  shows 
that  a  certain  portion  of  the  universe  of  experience  is  sub- 
jected to  critical  analysis  for  purposes  of  definitive  restate- 
ment. The  tendency  to  regard  one  combination  as  bare 
conjunction  or  mere  coincidence  is  absolutely  a  part  of  the 
movement  of  mind  in  its  search  for  the  real  connection. 

If  coexistence  as  such  is  to  be  set  over  against  coherence 
as  such,  as  the  non-logical  against  the  logical,  then,  since  our 
whole  spatial  universe  is  one  of  collocation,  and  since  thought 
in  this  universe  can  never  get  farther  than  substituting  one 
collocation  for  another,  the  whole  realm  of  space-experience 
is  condemned  off-hand  and  in  perpetuity  to  anti-rationality. 
But,  in  truth,  coincidence  as  over  against  coherence,  conjunc- 
tion as  over  against  connection,  is  just  suspected  coherence, 
one  which  is  under  the  fire  of  active  inquiry.  The  distinc- 
tion is  one  which  arises  only  within  the  grasp  of  the  logical 
or  reflective  function. 


36  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

3.  This  brings  us  explicitly  to  the  fact  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  either  coincidence  or  coherence  in  terms  of  the 
elements  or  meanings  contained  in  any  couple  or  pair  of 
ideas  taken  by  itself.  It  is  only*  when  they  are  co-factors 
in  a  situation  or  function  which  includes  more  than  either 
the  "coincident"  or  the  "coherent"  and  more  than  the  arith- 
metical sum  of  the  two,  that  thought's  activity  can  be 
evoked.  Lotze  is  continually  in  this  dilemma:  Thought 
either  shapes  its  own  material  or  else  just  accepts  it.  In 
the  first  case  (since  Lotze  cannot  rid  himself  of  the  pre- 
sumption that  thought  must  have  a  fixed  ready-made  ante- 
cedent) its  activity  can  only  alter  this  stuff  and  thus  lead  the 
mind  farther  away  from  reality.  But  if  thought  just  accepts 
its  material,  how  can  there  be  any  distinctive  aim  or  activity 
of  thought  at  all?  As  we  have  seen,  Lotze  endeavors  to 
escape  this  dilemma  by  supposing  that,  while  thought  receives 
its  material,  it  yet  checks  it  up:  it  eliminates  certain  portions 
of  it  and  reinstates  others,  plus  the  stamp  and  seal  of  its  own 
validity. 

Lotze  objects  most  strenuously  to  the  notion  that  thought 
awaits  its  subject-matter  with  certain  ready-made  modes  of 
apprehension.  This  notion  would  raise  the  insoluble  ques- 
tion of  how  thought  contrives  to  bring  the  matter  of  each 
impression  under  that  particular  form  which  is  appropriate 
to  it  (Vol.  I,  p.  24).  But  he  has  not  really  avoided  the  diffi- 
culty. How  does  thought  know  which  of  the  combinations 
are  merely  coincident  and  which  are  merely  coherent  ?  How 
does  it  know  which  to  eliminate  as  irrelevant  and  which  to 
confirm  as  grounded?  Either  this  evaluation  is  an  impo- 
sition of  its  own,  or  else  gets  its  cue  and  clue  from  the 
subject-matter.  Now,  if  the  coincident  and  the  coherent 
taken  in  and  of  themselves  are  competent  to  give  this  direc- 
tion, they  are  already  practically  labeled.  The  further  work 
of  thought  is  one  of  supererogation.  It  has  at  most  barely 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   37 

to  note  and  seal  the  material  combinations  that  are  already 
there.  Such  a  view  clearly  renders  thought's  work  as 
unnecessary  in  form  as  it  is  futile  in  force. 

But  there  is  no  alternative  in  this  dilemma  except  to 
recognize  that  an  entire  situation  of  experience,  within  which 
are  both  that  afterward  found  to  be  mere  coincidence  and 
that  found  to  be  real  connection,  actually  provokes  thought. 
It  is  only  as  an  experience  previously  accepted  comes  up  in 
its  wholeness  against  another  one  equally  integral ;  and  only 
as  some  larger  experience  dawns  which  requires  each  as  a 
part  of  itself  and  yet  within  which  the  required  factors  show 
themselves  mutually  incompatible,  that  thought  arises.  It 
is  not  bare  coincidence,  or  bare  connection,  or  bare  addition 
of  one  to  the  other,  that  excites  thought.  It  is  a  situation 
which  is  organized  or  constituted  as  a  whole,  and  which  yet 
is  falling  to  pieces  in  its  parts — a  situation  which  is  in  con- 
flict within  itself — that  arouses  the  search  to  find  what  really 
goes  together  and  a  correspondent  effort  to  shut  out  what 
only  seemingly  belongs  together.  And  real  coherence  means 
precisely  capacity  to  exist  within  the  comprehending  whole. 
It  is  a  case  of  the  psychologist's  fallacy  to  read  back  into  the 
preliminary  situation  those  distinctions  of  mere  conjunction 
of  material  and  of  valid  relationship  which  get  existence,  to 
say  nothing  of  fixation,  only  within  the  thought-process. 

We  must  not  leave  this  phase  of  the  discussion,  however, 
until  it  is  quite  clear  that  our  objection  is  not  to  Lotze's 
position  that  reflective  thought  arises  from  an  antecedent 
which  is  not  reflectional  in  character ;  nor  yet  to  his  idea  that 
this  antecedent  has  a  certain  structure  and  content  of  its  own 
setting  the  peculiar  problem  which  evokes  thought  and  gives 
the  cue  to  its  specific  activities.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  this 
latter  point  upon  which  we  would  insist;  and,  by  insisting, 
point  out,  negatively,  that  this  view  is  absolutely  inconsist- 
ent with  Lotze's  theory  that  psychical  impressions  and  ideas 


38  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

are  the  true  antecedents  of  thought ;  and,  positively,  that  it  is 
the  situation  as  a  wliole,  and  not  any  one  isolated  part  of  it, 
or  distinction  within  it,  that  calls  forth  and  directs  thinking. 
We  must  beware  the  fallacy  of  assuming  that  some  one  ele- 
ment in  the  prior  situation  in  isolation  or  detachment  induces 
the  thought  which  in  reality  comes  forth  only  from  the 
whole  disturbed  situation.  On  the  negative  side,  character- 
izations of  impression  and  idea  (whether  as  mental  contents 
or  as  psychical  existences)  are  distinctions  which  arise  only 
within  reflection  upon  the  situation  which  is  the  genuine 
antecedent  of  thought;  while  the  distinction  of  psychical 
existences  from  external  existences  arises  only  within  a 
highly  elaborate  technical  reflection — that  of  the  psycholo- 
gist as  such.1  Positively,  it  is  the  whole  dynamic  experience 
with  its  qualitative  and  pervasive  identity  of  value,  and  its 
inner  distraction,  its  elements  at  odds  with  each  other,  in 
tension  against  each  other,  contending  each  for  its  proper 
placing  and  relationship,  that  generates  the  thought- 
situation. 

From  this  point  of  view,  at  this  period  of  development, 
the  distinctions  of  objective  and  subjective  have  a  charac- 
teristic meaning.  The  antecedent,  to  repeat,  is  a  situation 
in  which  the  various  factors  are  actively  incompatible  with 
each  other,  and  which  yet  in  and  through  the  striving  tend  to 
a  re-formation  of  the  whole  and  to  a  restatement  of  the  parts. 
This  situation  as  such  is  clearly  objective.  It  is  there;  it  is 
there  as  a  whole;  the  various  parts  are  there;  and  their 

iThe  emphasis  here  is  upon  the  term  "existences,"  and  in  its  plural  form. 
Doubtless  the  distinction  of  some  experiences  as  belonging  to  me,  as  mine  in  a 
peculiarly  intimate  way,  from  others  as  chiefly  concerning  other  persons,  or  as  hav- 
ing to  do  with  things,  is  an  early  one.  But  this  is  a  distinction  of  concern,  of  value. 
The  distinction  referred  to  above  is  that  of  making  an  object,  or  presentation,  out  of 
this  felt  type  of  value,  and  thereby  breaking  it  up  into  distinct  "events,"  etc.,  with 
their  own  laws  of  inner  connection.  This  is  the  work  of  psychological  analysis. 
Upon  the  whole  matter  of  the  psychical  I  am  glad  to  refer  to  PROFESSOR  GEORGE  H. 
MEAD'S  article  entitled  "The  Definition  of  the  Psychical,"  Vol.  Ill,  Part  II,  of  The 
Decennial  Publications  of  the  University  of  Chicago. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   39 

active  incompatibility  with  one  another  is  there.  Nothing 
is  conveyed  at  this  point  by  asserting  that  any  particular  part 
of  the  situation  is  illusory  or  subjective,  or  mere  appearance ; 
or  that  any  other  is  truly  real.  It  is  the  further  work  of 
thought  to  exclude  some  of  the  contending  factors  from  mem- 
bership in  experience,  and  thus  to  relegate  them  to  the 
sphere  of  the  merely  subjective.  But  just  at  this  epoch 
the  experience  exists  as  one  of  vital  and  active  confusion 
and  conflict.  The  conflict  is  not  only  objective  in  a  de  facto 
sense  (that  is,  really  existent),  but  is  objective  in  a  logical 
sense  as  well ;  it  is  just  this  conflict  which  effects  the  transi- 
tion into  the  thought-situation — this,  in  turn,  being  only  a 
constant  movement  toward  a  defined  equilibrium.  The  con- 
flict has  objective  logical  value  because  it  is  the  antecedent 
condition  and  cue  of  thought. 

Every  reflective  attitude  and  function,  whether  of  naive 
life,  deliberate  invention,  or  controlled  scientific  research, 
has  risen  through  the  medium  of  some  such  total  objective 
situation.  The  abstract  logician  may  tell  us  that  sensa- 
tions or  impressions,  or  associated  ideas,  or  bare  physical 
things,  or  conventional  symbols,  are  antecedent  conditions. 
But  such  statements  cannot  be  verified  by  reference  to  a 
single  instance  of  thought  in  connection  with  actual  practice 
or  actual  scientific  research.  Of  course,  by  extreme  media- 
tion symbols  may  become  conditions  of  evoking  thought. 
They  get  to  be  objects  in  an  active  experience.  But  they  are 
stimuli  only  in  case  their  manipulation  to  form  a  new  whole 
occasions  resistance,  and  thus  reciprocal  tension.  Symbols 
and  their  definitions  develop  to  a  point  where  dealing  with 
them  becomes  itself  an  experience,  having  its  own  identity ; 
just  as  the  handling  of  commercial  commodities,  or  arrange- 
ment of  parts  of  an  invention,  is  an  individual  experience. 
There  is  always  as  antecedent  to  thought  an  experience  of  some 
subject-matter  of  the  physical  or  social  world,  or  organized 


40  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

intellectual  world,  whose  parts  are  actively  at  war  with  each 
other — so  much  so  that  they  threaten  to  disrupt  the  entire 
experience,  which  accordingly  for  its  own  maintenance 
requires  deliberate  re-definition  and  re-relation  of  its  ten- 
sional  parts.  This  is  the  reconstructive  process  termed 
thinking:  the  reconstructive  situation,  with  its  parts  in  ten- 
sion and  in  such  movement  toward  each  other  as  tends  to  a 
unified  experience,  is  the  thought-situation. 

This  at  once  suggests  the  subjective  phase.  The  situa- 
tion, the  experience  as  such,  is  objective.  There  is  an 
experience  of  the  confused  and  conflicting  tendencies.  But 
just  what  in  particular  is  objective,  just  what  form  the  situa- 
tion shall  take  as  an  organized  harmonious  whole,  is 
unknown;  that  is  the  problem.  It  is  the  uncertainty  as 
to  the  what  of  the  experience  together  with  the  certainty 
that  there  is  such  an  experience,  that  evokes  the  thought- 
function.  Viewed  from  this  standpoint  of  uncertainty,  the 
situation  as  a  whole  is  subjective.  No  particular  content  or 
reference  can  be  asserted  off-hand.  Definite  assertion  is 
expressly  reserved — it  is  to  be  the  outcome  of  the  proce- 
dure of  reflective  inquiry  now  undertaken.  This  holding 
off  of  contents  from  definitely  asserted  position,  this  viewing 
them  as  candidates  for  reform,  is  what  we  mean  at  this  stage 
of  the  natural  history  of  thought  by  the  subjective. 

We  have  followed  Lotze  through  his  tortuous  course  of 
inconsistencies.  It  is  better,  perhaps,  to  run  the  risk  of 
vain  repetition,  than  that  of  leaving  the  impression  that  these 
are  mere  self-contradictions.  It  is  an  idle  task  to  expose 
contradictions  save  we  realize  them  in  relation  to  the 
fundamental  assumption  which  breeds  them.  Lotze  is 
bound  to  differentiate  thought  from  its  antecedents.  He  is 
intent  to  do  this,  however,  through  a  preconception  that 
marks  off  the  thought-situation  radically  from  its  predecessor, 
through  a  difference  that  is  complete,  fixed,  and  absolute. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   41 

or  at  large.  It  is  a  total  contrast  of  thought  as  such  to 
something  else  as  such  that  he  requires,  not  a  contrast  within 
experience  of  one  phase  of  a  process,  one  period  of  a  rhythm, 
from  others. 

This  complete  and  rigid  difference  Lotze  finds  in  the 
difference  between  an  experience  which  is  mere  existence  or 
occurrence,  and  one  which  has  to  do  with  worth,  truth,  right 
relationship.  Now  things,  objects,  have  already,  implicitly 
at  least,  determinations  of  worth,  of  truth,  reality,  etc.  The 
same  is  true  of  deeds,  affections,  etc.,  etc.  Only  states  of 
feelings,  bare  impressions,  etc.,  seem  to  fulfil  the  prerequi- 
site of  being  given  as  existence,  and  yet  without  qualifica- 
tion as  to  worth,  etc.  Then  the  current  of  ideas  offers  itself, 
a  ready-made  stream  of  events,  of  existences,  which  can  be 
characterized  as  wholly  innocent  of  reflective  determination, 
and  as  the  natural  predecessor  of  thought. 

But  this  stream  of  existences  is  no  sooner  there  than  its 
total  incapacity  to  officiate  as  material  condition  and  cue  of 
thought  appears.  It  is  about  as  relevant  as  are  changes  that 
may  be  happening  on  the  other  side  of  the  moon.  So,  one 
by  one,  the  whole  series  of  determinations  of  value  or 
worth  already  traced  are  introduced  into  the  very  make- 
up, the  inner  structure,  of  what  was  to  be  mere  existence: 
viz.,  (1)  value  as  determined  by  things  of  whose  spatial  and 
temporal  relations  the  things  are  somehow  representative; 
(2)  hence,  value  in  the  shape  of  meaning — the  idea  as  signifi- 
cant, possessed  of  quality,  and  not  a  mere  event ;  (3)  distin- 
guished values  of  coincidence  and  coherence  within  the 
stream.  All  these  kinds  of  value  are  explicitly  asserted,  as 
we  have  seen ;  underlying  and  running  through  them  all  is 
the  recognition  of  the  supreme  value  of  a  situation  which  is 
organized  as  a  whole,  yet  conflicting  in  its  inner  constitution. 

These  contradictions  all  arise  in  the  attempt  to  put 
thought's  work,  as  concerned  with  value  or  validity  over 


42  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

against  experience  as  a  mere  antecedent  happening,  or  occur- 
rence. Since  this  contrast  arises  because  of  the  deeper 
attempt  to  consider  thought  as  an  independent  somewhat  in 
general  which  yet,  in  our  experience,  is  specifically  dependent, 
the  sole  radical  avoiding  of  the  contradictions  can  be  found 
in  the  endeavor  to  characterize  thought  as  a  specific  mode  of 
valuation  in  the  evolution  of  significant  experience,  having  its 
own  specific  occasion  or  demand,  and  its  own  specific  place. 
The  nature  of  the  organization  and  value  that  the  antece- 
dent conditions  of  the  thought-function  possess  is  too  large 
a  question  here  to  enter  upon  in  detail.  Lotze  himself 
suggests  the  answer.  He  speaks  of  the  current  of  ideas,  just 
as  a  current,  supplying  us  with  the  "mass  of  well-grounded 
information  which  regulates  daily  life "  (Vol.  I,  p.  4).  It 
gives  rise  to  "useful  combinations"  "correct  expectations" 
"seasonable  reactions"  (Vol.  I,  p.  7).  He  speaks  of  it, 
indeed,  as  if  it  were  just  the  ordinary  world  of  naive  experi- 
ence, the  so-called  empirical  world,  as  distinct  from  the 
world  as  critically  revised  and  rationalized  in  scientific  and 
philosophic  inquiry.  The  contradiction  between  this  inter- 
pretation and  that  of  a  mere  stream  of  psychical  impressions 
is  only  another  instance  of  the  difficulty  already  discussed. 
But  the  phraseology  suggests  the  type  of  value  possessed  by 
it.  The  unjefl ective  world  is  a  world  of  practical  values ;  of 
ends  and  means,  of  their  effective  adaptations;  of  control 
and  regulation  of  conduct  in  view  of  results.  Even  the  most 
purely  utilitarian  of  values  are  nevertheless  values ;  not  mere 
existences.  But  the  world  of  uncritical  experience  is  saved 
from  reduction  to  just  material  uses  and  worths ;  for  it  is  a 
world  of  social  aims  and  means,  involving  at  every  turn  the 
values  of  affection  and  attachment,  of  competition  and 
co-operation.  It  has  incorporate  also  in  its  own  being  the 
surprise  of  aesthetic  values — the  sudden  joy  of  light,  the 
gracious  wonder  of  tone  and  form. 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   43 

I  do  not  mean  that  this  holds  in  gross  of  the  unreflect- 
ive  world  of  experience  over  against  the  critical  thought- 
situation  —  such  a  contrast  implies  the  very  wholesale,  at 
large,  consideration  of  thought  which  I  am  striving  to  avoid. 
Doubtless  many  and  many  an  act  of  thought  has  intervened 
in  effecting  the  organization  of  our  commonest  practical- 
affectional-aBsthetic  region  of  values.  I  only  mean  to 
indicate  that  thought  does  take  place  in  such  a  world;  not 
after  a  world  of  bare  existences  lacking  value-specifica- 
tions; and  that  the  more  systematic  reflection  we  call 
organized  science,  may,  in  some  fair  sense,  be  said  to  come 
after,  but  to  come  after  affectional,  artistic,  and  technological 
interests  which  have  found  realization  and  expression  in 
building  up  a  world  of  values. 

Having  entered  so  far  upon  a  suggestion  which  cannot  be 
followed  out,  I  venture  one  other  digression.  The  notion 
that  value  or  significance  as  distinct  from  mere  existentiality 
is  the  product  of  thought  or  reason,  and  that  the  source  of 
Lotze's  contradictions  lies  in  the  effort  to  find  any  situa- 
tion prior  or  antecedent  to  thought,  is  a  familiar  one  —  it  is 
even  possible  that  my  criticisms  of  Lotze  have  been  inter- 
preted by  some  readers  in  this  sense.1  This  is  the  posi- 
tion frequently  called  neo-Hegelian  (though,  I  think,  with 
questionable  accuracy),  and  has  been  developed  by  many 
writers  in  criticising  Kant.  This  position  and  that  taken 
in  this  chapter  do  indeed  agree  in  certain  general  regards. 
They  are  at  one  in  denial  of  the  factuality  and  the  possi- 


have  a  most  acute  and  valuable  criticism  of  Lotze  from  this  point  of 
view  in  PBOFESSOK  HENKY  JONES,  Philosophy  of  Lotze,  1895.  My  specific  criti- 
cisms agree  in  the  main  with  his,  and  I  am  glad  to  acknowledge  my  indebtedness. 
But  I  cannot  agree  in  the  belief  that  the  business  of  thought  is  to  qualify  reality  as 
such  ;  its  occupation  appears  to  me  to  be  determining  the  reconstruction  of  some 
aspect  or  portion  of  reality,  and  to  fall  within  the  course  of  reality  itself;  being, 
indeed,  the  characteristic  medium  of  its  activity.  And  I  cannot  agree  that  reality  as 
such,  with  increasing  fulness  of  knowledge,  presents  itself  as  a  thought-system, 
though,  as  just  indicated,  I  have  no  doubt  that  reality  appears  as  thought-specifica- 
tions or  values,  just  as  it  does  as  affectional  and  aesthetic  and  the  rest  of  them. 


44  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

bility  of  developing  fruitful  reflection  out  of  antecedent 
bare  existence  or  mere  events.  They  unite  in  denying  that 
there  is  or  can  be  any  such  thing  as  mere  existence  —  phe- 
nomenon unqualified  as  respects  meaning,  whether  such 
phenomenon  be  psychic  or  cosmic.  They  agree  that  reflective 
thought  grows  organically  out  of  an  experience  which  is 
already  organized,  and  that  it  functions  within  such  an  organ- 
ism. But  they  part  company  when  a  fundamental  question 
is  raised:  Is  all  organized  meaning  the  work  of  thought? 
Does  it  therefore  follow  that  the  organization  out  of  which 
reflective  thought  grows  is  the  work  of  thought  of  some 
other  type  —  of  Pure  Thought,  Creative  or  Constitutive 
Thought,  Intuitive  Reason,  etc.  ?  I  shall  indicate  briefly 
the  reasons  for  divergence  at  this  point. 

To  cover  all  the  practical-social-aesthetic  values  involved, 
the  term  "  thought "  has  to  be  so  stretched  that  the  situation 
might  as  well  be  called  by  any  other  name  that  describes 
a  typical  value  of  experience.  More  specifically,  when  the 
difference  is  minimized  between  the  organized  and  arranged 
scheme  of  values  out  of  which  reflective  inquiry  proceeds, 
and  reflective  inquiry  itself  (and  there  can  be  no  other  rea- 
son for  insisting  that  the  antecedent  of  reflective  thought 
is  itself  somehow  thought),  exactly  the  same  type  of  prob- 
lem recurs  -  that  presents  itself  when  the  distinction  is 
exaggerated  into  one  between  bare  unvalued  existences  and 
rational  coherent  meanings. 

For  the  more  one  insists  that  the  antecedent  situation  is 
constituted  by  thought,  the  more  one  has  to  wonder  why 
another  type  of  thought  is  required;  what  need  arouses  it, 
and  how  it  is  possible  for  it  to  improve  upon  the  work  of 
previous  constitutive  thought.  This  difficulty  at  once  forces 
us  from  a  logic  of  experience  as  it  is  concretely  experienced 
into  a  metaphysic  of  a  purely  hypothetical  experience.  Con- 
stitutive thought  precedes  our  conscious  thought-operations ; 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OF  THOUGHT-FUNCTION  45 

hence  it  must  be  the  working  of  some  absolute  universal 
thought  which,  unconsciously  to  our  reflection,  builds  up  an 
organized  world.  But  this  recourse  only  deepens  the  difficulty. 
How  does  it  happen  that  the  absolute  constitutive  and  intui- 
tive Thought  does  such  a  poor  and  bungling  job  that  it 
requires  a  finite  discursive  activity  to  patch  up  its  products  ? 
Here  more  metaphysic  is  called  for:  The  Absolute  Reason 
is  now  supposed  to  work  under  limiting  conditions  of  finitude, 
of  a  sensitive  and  temporal  organism.  The  antecedents  of 
reflective  thought  are  not,  therefore,  determinations  of 
thought  pure  and  undefiled,  but  of  what  thought  can  do 
when  it  stoops  to  assume  the  yoke  of  change  and  of  feeling. 
I  pass  by  the  metaphysical  problem  left  unsolved  by  this  flight 
into  metaphysic:  Why  and  how  should  a  perfect,  absolute, 
complete,  finished  thought  find  it  necessary  to  submit  to 
alien,  disturbing,  and  corrupting  conditions  in  order,  in  the 
end,  to  recover  through  reflective  thought  in  a  partial,  piece- 
meal, wholly  inadequate  way  what  it  possessed  at  the  outset 
in  a  much  more  satisfactory  way? 

I  confine  myself  to  the  .logical  difficulty.  How  can 
thought  relate  itself  to  the  fragmentary  sensations,  impres- 
sions, feelings,  which,  in  their  contrast  with  and  disparity 
from  the  workings  of  constitutive  thought,  mark  it  off  from 
the  latter;  and  which  in  their  connection  with  its  products 
give  the  cue  to  reflective  thinking?  Here  we  have  again 
exactly  the  problem  with  which  Lotze  has  been  wrestling: 
we  have  the  same  insoluble  question  of  the  reference  of 
thought-activity  to  a  wholly  indeterminate  unrationalized, 
independent,  prior  existence.  The  absolute  rationalist  who 
takes  up  the  problem  at  this  point  will  find  himself  forced 
into  the  same  continuous  seesaw,  the  same  scheme  of  alter- 
nate rude  robbery  and  gratuitous  gift,  that  Lotze  engaged 
in.  The  simple  fact  is  that  here  is  just  where  Lotze  himself 
began;  he  saw  that  previous  transcendental  logicians  had 


46  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

left  untouched  the  specific  question  of  relation  of  our  sup- 
posedly finite,  reflective  thought  to  its  own  antecedents,  and 
he  set  out  to  make  good  the  defect.  If  reflective  thought  is 
required  because  constitutive  thought  works  under  exter- 
nally limiting  conditions  of  sense,  then  we  have  some  ele- 
ments which  are,  after  all,  mere  existences,  events,  etc.  Or, 
if  they  have  organization  from  some  other  source,  and  induce 
reflective  thought  not  as  bare  impressions,  etc.,  but  through 
their  place  in  some  whole,  then  we  have  admitted  the  possi- 
bility of  organic  unity  in  experience,  apart  from  Reason, 
and  the  ground  for  assuming  Pure  Constitutive  Thought  is 
abandoned. 

The  contradiction  appears  equally  when  viewed  from  the 
side  of  thought-activity  and  its  characteristic  forms.  All  our 
knowledge,  after  all,  of  thought  as  constitutive  is  gained  by 
consideration  of  the  operations  of  reflective  thought.  The 
perfect  system  of  thought  is  so  perfect  that  it  is  a  luminous, 
harmonious  whole,  without  definite  parts  or  distinctions  — 
or,  if  there  are  such,  it  is  only  reflection  that  brings  them 
out.  The  categories  and  methods  of  constitutive  thought 
itself  must  therefore  be  characterized  in  terms  of  the  modus 
operandi  of  reflective  thought.  Yet  the  latter  takes  place 
just  because  of  the  peculiar  problem  of  the  peculiar  conditions 
under  which  it  arises.  Its  work  is  progressive,  reformatory, 
reconstructive,  synthetic,  in  the  terminology  made  familiar 
by  Kant.  We  are  not  only  not  justified,  accordingly,  in 
transferring  its  determinations  over  to  constitutive  thought, 
but  we  are  absolutely  prohibited  from  attempting  any  such 
transfer.  To  identify  logical  processes,  states,  devices,  results 
that  are  conditioned  upon  the  primary  fact  of  resistance  to 
thought  as  constitutive  with  the  structure  of  such  thought  is 
as  complete  an  instance  of  the  fallacy  of  recourse  from  one 
genus  to  another  as  could  well  be  found.  Constitutive  and 
reflective  thought  are,  first,  defined  in  terms  of  their  dissimi- 


CONDITIONS  AND  CUES  OP  THOUGHT-FUNCTION   47 

larity  and  even  opposition,  and  then  without  more  ado  the 
forms  of  the  description  of  the  latter  are  carried  over  bodily 
to  the  former ! l 

This  is  not  meant  for  a  merely  controversial  criticism.  It 
is  meant  to  point  positively  toward  the  fundamental  thesis  of 
these  chapters:  All  the  distinctions  of  the  thought-function, 
of  conception  as  over  against  sense-perception,  of  judgment  in 
its  various  modes  and  forms,  of  inference  in  its  vast  diversity 
of  operation — all  these  distinctions  come  within  the  thought- 
situation  as  growing  out  of  a  characteristic  antecedent  typical 
formation  of  experience ;  and  have  for  their  purpose  the  solu- 
tion of  the  peculiar  problem  with  respect  to  which  the 
thought-function  is  generated  or  evolved:  the  restoration  of 
a  deliberately  integrated  experience  from  the  inherent  con- 
flict into  which  it  has  fallen. 

The  failure  of  transcendental  logic  has  the  same  origin  as 
the  failure  of  the  empiristic  (whether  taken  pure  or  in  the 
mixed  form  in  which  Lotze  presents  it).  It  makes  absolute 
and  fixed  certain  distinctions  of  existence  and  meaning,  and 
of  one  kind  of  meaning  and  another  kind,  which  are  wholly 
historic  and  relative  in  their  origin  and  their  significance. 
It  views  thought  as  attempting  to  represent  or  state  reality 
once  for  all,  instead  of  trying  to  determine  some  phases  or 
contents  of  it  with  reference  to  their  more  effective  and 
significant  reciprocal  employ — instead  of  as  reconstructive. 
The  rock  against  which  every  such  logic  splits  is  that  either 
reality  already  has  the  statement  which  thought  is  endeavor- 
ing to  give  it,  or  else  it  has  not.  In  the  former  case,  thought 
is  futilely  reiterative;  in  the  latter,  it  is  falsificatory. 

The  significance  of  Lotze  for  critical  purposes  is  that  his 
peculiar  effort  to  combine  a  transcendental  view  of  thought 
(t.  e.,  of  Thought  as  active  in  forms  of  its  own,  pure  in  and 

1  Bradley's  criticisms  of  rationalistic  idealism  should  have  made  the  force  of 
this  point  reasonably  familiar. 


48  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

of  themselves)  with  certain  obvious  facts  of  the  dependence 
of  our  thought  upon  specific  empirical  antecedents,  brings 
to  light  fundamental  defects  in  both  the  empiristic  and  the 
transcendental  logics.  We  discover  a  common  failure  in 
both:  the  failure  to  view  logical  terms  and  distinctions  with 
respect  to  their  necessary  function  in  the  redintegration  of 
experience. 


Ill 

THOUGHT    AND   ITS  SUBJECT-MATTER:  THE    DATUM  OF 

THINKING 

WE  have  now  reached  a  second  epochal  stage  in  the  evo- 
lution of  the  thought-situation,  a  crisis  which  forces  upon 
us  the  problem  of  the  distinction  and  mutual  reference 
of  the  datum  or  presentation,  and  the  ideas  or  "  thoughts." 
It  will  economize  and  perhaps  clarify  discussion  if  we  start  from 
the  relatively  positive  and  constructive  result  just  reached, 
and  review  Lotze's  treatment  from  that  point  of  regard. 

We  have  reached  the  point  of  conflict  in  the  matters  or 
contents  of  an  experience.  It  is  in  this  conflict  and  because 
of  it  that  the  matters  or  contents,  or  significant  quales,  stand 
out  as  such.  As  long  as  the  sun  revolves  about  earth  without 
tension  or  question,  this  "content,"  or  fact,  is  not  in  any  way 
abstracted  as  content  or  object.  Its  very  distinction  as 
content  from  the  form  or  mode  of  experience  as  such  is  the 
result  of  post-reflection.  The  same  conflict  makes  other 
experiences  assume  conscious  objectification ;  they,  too,  cease 
to  be  ways  of  living,  and  become  distinct  objects  of  observa- 
tion and  consideration.  The  movements  of  planets,  eclipses, 
etc.,  are  cases  in  point.1  The  maintenance  of  a  unified  experi- 
ence has  become  a  problem,  an  end.  It  is  no  longer  secure. 
But  this  involves  such  restatement  of  the  conflicting  ele- 
ments as  will  enable  them  to  take  a  place  somewhere  in  the 
new  experience ;  they  must  be  disposed  of  somehow,  and  they 
can  be  disposed  of  finally  only  as  they  are  provided  for.  That 

iThe  common  statement  that  primitive  man  projects  his  own  volitions, 
emotions,  etc.,  into  objects  is  but  a  back-handed  way  of  expressing  the  truth  that 
"  objects,"  etc.,  have  only  gradually  emerged  from  their  life-matrix.  Looking  back, 
it  is  almost  impossible  to  avoid  the  fallacy  of  supposing  that  somehow  such 
objects  were  there  first  and  were  afterward  emotionally  appreciated. 

49 


50  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

is,  they  cannot  be  simply  denied  or  excluded  or  eliminated; 
they  must  be  taken  into  the  fold  of  the  new  experience; 
such  introduction,  on  the  other  hand,  clearly  demands  more 
or  less  modification  or  transformation  on  their  part.  The 
thought-situation  is  the  conscious  maintenance  of  the  unity 
of  experience,  with  a  critical  consideration  of  the  claims  of 
the  various  conflicting  contents  to  a  place  within  itself,  and 
a  deliberate  final  assignment  of  position. 

The  conflicting  situation  inevitably  polarizes  or  dichoto- 
mizes itself.  There  is  somewhat  which  is  untouched  in  the  con- 
tention of  incompatibles.  There  is  something  which  remains 
secure,  unquestioned.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  ele- 
ments which  are  rendered  doubtful  and  precarious.  This 
gives  the  framework  of  fhe  general  distribution  of  the  field 
into  "facts,"  the  given,  the  presented,  the  Datum  ;  and  ideas, 
the  ideal,  the  conceived,  the  Thought.  For  there  is  always 
something  unquestioned  in  any  problematic  situation  at  any 
stage  of  its  process,1  even  if  it  be  only  the  fact  of  conflict  or 
tension.  For  this  is  never  mere  tension  at  large.  It  is 
thoroughly  qualified,  or  characteristically  toned  and  colored, 
by  the  particular  elements  which  are  in  strife.  Hence  it  is 
this  conflict,  unique  and  irreplaceable.  That  it  comes  now 
means  precisely  that  it  has  never  come  before;  that  it  is 
now  passed  in  review  and  some  sort  of  a  settlement  reached, 
means  that  just  this  conflict  will  never  recur.  In  a  word, 
the  conflict  as  such  is  immediately  expressed,  or  felt,  as  of 
just  this  and  no  other  sort,  and  this  immediately  appre- 
hended quality  is  an  irreducible  datum.  It  is  fact,  even  if 
all  else  be  doubtful.  As  it  is  subjected  to  examination,  it 
loses  vagueness  and  assumes  more  definite  form. 

i  Of  course,  this  very  element  may  be  the  precarious,  the  ideal,  and  possibly 
fanciful  of  some  other  situation.  But  it  is  to  change  the  historic  into  the  absolute 
to  conclude  that  therefore  everything  is  uncertain,  all  at  once,  or  as  such.  This 
gives  metaphysical  skepticism  as  distinct  from  the  working  skepticism  which  is  an 
inherent  factor  in  all  reflection  and  scientific  inquiry. 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  51 

Only  in  very  extreme  cases,  however,  does  the  assured, 
unquestioned  element  reduce  to  as  low  terms  as  we  have 
here  imagined.  Certain  things  come  to  stand  forth  as  facts, 
no  matter  what  else  may  be  doubted.  There  are  certain 
apparent  diurnal  changes  of  the  sun ;  there  is  a  certain 
annual  course  or  track.  There  are  certain  nocturnal  changes 
in  the  planets,  and  certain  seasonal  rhythmic  paths.  The 
significance  of  these  may  be  doubted:  Do  they  mean  real 
change  in  the  sun  or  in  the  earth?  But  change,  and  change 
of  a  certain  definite  and  numerically  determinate  character 
is  there.  It  is  clear  that  such  out-standing  facts  (ex-istences) 
constitute  the  data,  the  given  or  presented,  of  the  thought- 
function. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  is  only  one  correspondent,  or  status, 
in  the  total  situation.  With  the  consciousness  of  this  as  cer- 
tain, as  given  to  be  reckoned  with,  goes  the  consciousness  of 
uncertainty  as  to  what  it  means — of  how  it  is  to  be  under- 
stood or  interpreted.  The  facts  qua  presentation  or  exist- 
ences are  sure ;  qua  meaning  (position  and  relationship  in  an 
experience  yet  to  be  secured)  they  are  doubtful.  Yet  doubt 
does  not  preclude  memory  or  anticipation.  Indeed,  it  is 
possible  only  through  them.  The  memory  of  past  experience 
makes  sun-revolving-about-earth  an  object  of  attentive 
regard.  The  recollection  of  certain  other  experiences  sug- 
gests the  idea  of  earth-rotating-daily-on-axis  and  revolving- 
annually-about-sun.  These  contents  are  as  much  present 
as  is  the  observation  of  change,  but  as  respects  worth, 
they  are  only  possibilities.  Accordingly,  they  are  catego- 
rized or  disposed  of  as  just  ideas,  meanings,  thoughts,  ways 
of  conceiving,  comprehending,  interpreting  facts. 

Correspondence  of  reference  here  is  as  obvious  as  correla- 
tion of  existence.  In  the  logical  process,  the  datum  is  not 
just  real  existence,  and  the  idea  mere  psychical  unreality. 
Both  are  modes  of  existence — one  of  given  existence,  the 


52  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

other  of  mental  existence.  And  if  the  mental  existence  is  in 
such  cases  regarded,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  unified 
experience  aimed  at,  as  having  only  possible  value,  the  datum 
also  is  regarded,  from  the  value  standpoint,  as  incomplete  and 
unassured.  The  very  existence  of  the  idea  or  meaning  as 
separate  is  the  partial,  broken  up,  and  hence  objectively 
unreal  (from  the  validity  standpoint)  character  of  the  datum. 
Or,  as  we  commonly  put  it,  while  the  ideas  are  impressions, 
suggestions,  guesses,  theories,  estimates,  etc.,  the  facts  are 
crude,  raw,  unorganized,  brute.  They  lack  relationship,  that 
is,  assured  place  in  the  universe ;  they  are  deficient  as  to  con- 
tinuity. Mere  change  of  apparent  position  of  sun,  which  is 
absolutely  unquestioned  as  datum,  is  a  sheer  abstraction 
from  the  standpoint  either  of  the  organized  experience  left 
behind,  or  of  the  reorganized  experience  which  is  the  end — 
the  objective.  It  is  impossible  as  a  persistent  object  in  expe- 
rience or  reality.  In  other  words,  datum  and  ideatum  are 
divisions  of  labor,  co-operative  instrumentalities,  for  eco- 
nomical dealing  with  the  problem  of  the  maintenance  of  the 
integrity  of  experience. 

Once  more,  and  briefly,  both  datum  and  ideatum  may 
(and  positively,  veritably,  do)  break  up,  each  for  itself,  into 
physical  and  psychical.  In  so  far  as  the  conviction  gains 
ground  that  the  earth  revolves  about  the  sun,  the  old  fact  is 
broken  up  into  a  new  cosmic  existence,  and  a  new  psychologi- 
cal condition — the  recognition  of  a  mental  process  in  virtue  of 
which  movements  of  smaller  bodies  in  relation  to  very  remote 
larger  bodies  are  interpreted  in  a  reverse  sense.  "We  do 
not  just  eliminate  as  false  the  source  of  error  in  the  old  con- 
tent. We  reinterpret  it  as  valid  in  its  own  place,  viz.,  a  case 
of  the  psychology  of  apperception,  although  invalid  as  a 
matter  of  cosmic  structure.  In  other  words,  with  increasing 
accuracy  of  determination  of  the  given,  there  comes  a  dis- 
tinction, for  methodological  purposes,  between  the  quality 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  53 

or  matter  of  the  sense-experience  and  its  form — the  sense- 
perceiving,  as  itself  a  psychological  fact,  having  its  own  place 
and  laws  or  relations.  Moreover,  the  old  experience,  that 
of  sun-revolving,  abides.  But  it  is  regarded  as  belonging  to 
<  <me" — to  this  experiencing  individual,  rather  than  to  the 
cosmic  world.  It  is  psychic. 

Here,  then,  within  the  growth  of  the  thought-situation 
and  as  a  part  of  the  process  of  determining  specific  truth 
under  specific  conditions,  we  get  for  the  first  time  the  clue 
to  that  distinction  with  which,  as  ready-made  and  prior  to  all 
thinking,  Lotze  started  out,  namely,  the  separation  of  the 
matter  of  impression  from  impression  as  psychical  event. 
The  separation  which,  taken  at  large,  engenders  an  insolu- 
ble problem,  appears  within  a  particular  reflective  inquiry, 
as  an  inevitable  differentiation  of  a  scheme  of  values. 

The  same  sort  of  thing  occurs  on  the  side  of  thought,  or 
meaning.  The  meaning  or  idea  which  is  growing  in  accept- 
ance, which  is  gaining  ground  as  meaning-of -datum,  gets 
logical  or  intellectual  or  objective  force ;  that  which  is  losing 
standing,  which  is  increasingly  doubtful,  gets  qualified  as 
just  a  notion,  a  fancy,  a  pre-judice,  mis-conception — or  finally 
just  an  error,  a  mental  slip. 

Evaluated  as  fanciful  in  validity  it  becomes  mere  image — 
subjective;1  and  finally  a  psychical  existence.  It  is  not 
eliminated,  but  receives  a  new  reference  or  meaning.  Thus 
the  distinction  between  subjectivity  and  objectivity  is  not 
one  between  meaning  as  such  and  datum  as  such.  It  is  a 
specification  that  emerges,  correspondently,  in  both  datum 
and  ideatum,  as  affairs  of  the  direction  of  logical  movement. 
That  which  is  left  behind  in  the  evolution  of  accepted  mean- 
ing is  characterized  as  real,  but  only  in  a  psychical  sense ; 

i  But  this  is  a  slow  progress  within  reflection.  Plato,  who  was  influential  in 
bringing  this  general  distinction  to  consciousness,  still  thought  and  wrote  as  if 
*'  image  "  were  itself  a  queer  sort  of  objective  existence ;  it  was  only  gradually  that 
it  was  disposed  of  as  psychical,  or  a  phase  of  immediate  experience. 


54  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

that  which  is  moved  toward  is  regarded  as  real  in  an  objec- 
tive, cosmic  sense.1 

The  implication  of  the  psychic  and  the  logical  within 
both  the  given  presentation  and  the  thought  about  it,  appears 
in  the  continual  shift  to  which  logicians  of  Lotze's  type  are 
put.  When  the  psychical  is  regarded  as  existence  over 
against  meaning  as  just  ideal,  reality  seems  to  reside  in  the 
psychical;  it  is  there  anyhow,  and  meaning  is  just  a  curious 
attachment — curious  because  as  mere  meaning  it  is  non-exist- 
ent as  event  or  state — and  there  seems  to  be  nothing  by 
which  it  can  be  even  tied  to  the  psychical  state  as  its  bearer 
or  representative.  But  when  the  emphasis  falls  on  thought 
as  content,  as  significance,  then  the  psychic  event,  the  idea  as 
image2  (as  distinct  from  idea  as  meaning)  appears  as  an 
accidental  but  necessary  evil,  the  unfortunate  irrelevant 
medium  through  which  our  thinking  has  to  go  on.3 

1  Of  course,  this  means  that  what  is  excluded  and  so  left  behind  in  the  problem 
of  determination  of  this  objective  content  is  regarded  as  psychical.    With  reference 
to  other  problems  and  aims  this  same  psychic  existence  is  initial,  not   survival. 
Released  from  its  prior  absorption  in  some  unanalyzed  experience  it  gains  standing 
and  momentum  on  its  own  account ;  e.  g.,  the  "  personal  equation  "  represents  what 
is  eliminated  from  a  given  astronomic  time-determination  as  being  purely  subjec- 
tive, or  "  source-of-error."  But  it  is  initiatory  in  reference  to  new  modes  of  technique, 
re-readings  of  previous  data  —  new  considerations  in  psychology,  even  new  socio- 
ethical  judgments.    Moreover,  it  remains  a  fact,  and  even  a  worthful  fact,  as  a  part 
of  one's  own  "  inner  "  experience,  as  an  immediate  psychical  reality.    That  is  to  say, 
there  is  a  regign  of  personal  experience  (mainly  emotive  or  affectional)  already  recog- 
nized as  a  sphere  of  value.    The  "  source  of  error  "  is  disposed  of  by  making  it  a  fact 
of  this  region.    The  recognition  of  falsity  does  not  originate  the  psychic  (p.  38,  note). 

2  Of  course,  this  is  a  further  reflective  distinction.    The  plain  man  and  the  stu- 
dent do  not  determine  the  extraneous,  irrelevant,  and  misleading  matter  as  image 
in  a  psychological  sense,  but  only  as  fanciful  or  fantastic.    Only  to  the  psychologist 
and  for  his  purpose  does  it  break  up  into  image  and  meaning. 

3  Bradley,  more  than  any  other  writer,  has  seized  upon  this  double  antithesis, 
and  used  it  first  to  condemn  the  logical  as  such,  and  then  turned  it  around  as  the 
impartial  condemnation  of  the  psychical  also.    See  Appearance  and  Reality.    In 
chap.  15  he  metes  out  condemnation  to  "  thought "  because  it  can  never  take  in 
the  psychical  existence  or  reality  which  is  present ;  in  chap.  19,  he  passes  similar 
judgment  upon  the  "  psychical "  because  it  is  brutally  fragmentary.   Other  epistemo- 
logical  logicians  have  wrestled  —  or  writhed  —  with  this  problem,  but  I  believe  Brad- 
ley's  position   is  impregnable  —  from  the  standpoint   of   ready-made   differences. 
When  the  antithesis  is  treated  as  part  and  lot  of  the  process  of  defining  the  truth  of 
a  particular  subject-matter,  .and  thus  as  historic  and  relative,  the  case  is  quite 
otherwise. 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  55 

1.  The  data  of  thought. — When  we  turn  to  Lotze, 
we  find  that  he  makes  a  clear  distinction  between  the  pre- 
sented material  of  thought,  its  datum,  and  the  typical  charac- 
teristic modes  of  thinking  in  virtue  of  which  the  datum  gets 
organization  or  system.  It  is  interesting  to  note  also  that 
he  states  the  datum  in  terms  different  from  those  in  which 
the  antecedents  of  thought  are  defined.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  the  material  upon  which  ideas  exercise  themselves, 
it  is  not  coincidence,  collocation,  or  succession  that  counts; 
but  gradation  of  degrees  in  a  scale.  It  is  not  things  in 
spatial  or  temporal  grouping  that  are  emphasized,  but  qual- 
ities as  mutually  distingushed,  yet  classed — as  differences 
of  a  common  somewhat.  There  is  no  inherent  inconceivabil- 
ity in  the  idea  that  every  impression  should  be  as  incom- 
parably different  from  every  other  as  sweet  is  from  warm. 
But  by  a  remarkable  circumstance  such  is  not  the  case. 
We  have  series,  and  networks  of  series.  We  have  diversity 
of  a  common — diverse  colors,  sounds,  smells,  tastes,  etc.  In 
other  words,  the  datum  is  sense-qualities  which,  fortunately 
for  thought,  are  given  arranged,  as  shades,  degrees,  varia- 
tions, or  qualities  of  somewhat  that  is  identical.1 

All  this  is  given,  presented,  to  our  ideational  activities. 
Even  the  universal,  the  common-color  which  runs  through 
the  various  qualities  of  blue,  green,  white,  etc.,  is  not  a 
product  of  thought,  but  something  which  thought  finds 
already  in  existence.  It  conditions  comparison  and  recipro- 
cal distinction.  Particularly  all  mathematical  determina- 
tions, whether  of  counting  (number),  degree  (more  or  less), 
and  quantity  (greatness  and  smallness),  come  back  to  this 
peculiarity  of  the  datum  of  thought.  Here  Lotze  dwells  at 
considerable  length  upon  the  fact  that  the  very  possibility,  as 
well  as  the  success,  of  thought  is  due  to  this  peculiar  uni- 
versalization  or  prima  facie  ordering  with  which  its  material 

1  Vol.  I,  pp.  28-34. 


56  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

is  given  to  it.  Such  pre-established  fitness  in  the  meeting 
of  two  things  that  have  nothing  to  do  with  each  other  is 
certainly  cause  enough  for  wonder  and  congratulation. 

It  should  not  be  difficult  to  see  why  Lotze  uses  different 
categories  in  describing  the  given  material  of  thought  from 
those  employed  in  describing  its  antecedent  conditions, 
even  though,  according  to  him,  the  two  are  absolutely  the 
same.1  He  has  different  functions  in  mind.  In  one  case, 
the  material  must  be  characterized  as  evoking,  as  incentive, 
as  stimulus  —  from  this  point  of  view  the  peculiar  combina- 
tion of  coincidence  and  coherence  is  emphasized.  But  in 
the  other  case  the  material  must  be  characterized  as  afford- 
ing stuff,  actual  subject-matter.  Data  are  not  only  what  is 
given  to  thought,  but  they  are  also  the  food,  the  raw  mate- 
rial, of  thought.  They  must  be  described  as,  on  the  one 
hand,  wholly  outside  of  thought.  This  clearly  puts  them 
into  the  region  of  sense-perception.  They  are  matter  of 
sensation  given  free  from  all  inferring,  judging,  relating 
influence.  Sensation  is  just  what  is  not  called  up  in  mem- 
ory or  in  anticipated  projection — it  is  the  immediate,  the 
irreducible.  On  the  other  hand,  sensory-matter  is  quali- 

i  It  is  interesting  to  see  how  explicitly  Lotze  is  compelled  finally  to  differentiate 
two  aspects  in  the  antecedents  of  thoughts,  one  of  which  is  necessary  in  order  that 
there  may  be  anything  to  call  out  thought  (a  lack,  or  problem) ;  the  other  in  order 
that  when  thought  is  evoked  it  may  find  data  at  hand  —  that  is,  material  in  shape  to 
receive  and  respond  to  its  exercise.  "The  manifold  matter  of  ideas  is  brought 
before  us,  not  only  in  the  systematic  order  of  its  qualitative  relationships,  but  in  the 
rich  variety  of  local  and  temporal  combinations The  combinations  of  hetero- 
geneous ideas  ....  forms  the  problems,  in  connection  with  which  the  efforts  of 
thought  to  reduce  coexistence  to  coherence  will  subsequently  be  made.  The  homoge- 
neous or  similar  ideas,  on  the  other  hand,  give  occasion  to  separate,  to  connect,  and 
to  count  their  repetitions."  (Vol.1,  pp.  33,  34;  italics  mine.)  Without  the  hetero- 
geneous variety  of  the  local  and  temporal  juxtapositions  there  would  be  nothing  to 
excite  thought.  Without  the  systematic  arrangement  of  quality  there  would  be 
nothing  to  meet  thought  and  reward  it  for  its  efforts.  The  homogeneity  of  qualita- 
tive relationships,  in  the  pre-thought  material,  gives  the  tools  or  instruments  by 
which  thought  is  enabled  successfully  to  tackle  the  heterogeneity  of  collocations 
and  conjunctions  also  found  in  the  same  material !  One  would  suppose  that  when 
Lotze  reached  this  point  he  might  have  been  led  to  suspect  that  in  this  remarkable 
adjustment  of  thought-stimuli,  thought-material,  and  thought-tools  to  one  another, 
he  must  after  all  be  dealing,  not  with  something  prior  to  the  thought-function,  but 
with  the  necessary  elements  in  and  of  the  thought-situation. 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  57 

tative,  and  quales  are  made  up  on  a  common  basis.  They 
are  degrees  or  grades  of  a  common  quality.  Thus  they 
have  a  certain  ready-made  setting  of  mutual  distinction  and 
reference  which  is  already  almost,  if  not  quite,  the  effect  of 
comparing,  of  relating,  and  these  are  the  express  traits  of 
thinking. 

It  is  easy  to  interpret  this  miraculous  gift  of  grace  in 
the  light  of  what  has  been  said.  The  data  are  in  truth 
precisely  that  which  is  selected  and  set  aside  as  present,  as 
immediate.  Thus  they  are  given  to  further  thought.  But 
the  selection  has  occurred  in  view  of  the  need  for  thought ; 
it  is  a  listing  of  the  capital  in  the  way  of  the  undisturbed, 
the  undiscussed,  which  thought  can  count  upon  in  this 
particular  problem.  Hence  it  is  not  strange  that  it  has  a 
peculiar  fitness  of  adaptation  for  thought's  further  work. 
Having  been  selected  with  precisely  that  end  in  view,  the 
wonder  would  be  if  it  were  not  so  fitted.  A  man  may  coin 
counterfeit  money  for  use  upon  others,  but  hardly  with  the 
intent  of  passing  it  off  upon  himself. 

Our  only  difficulty  here  is  that  the  mind  flies  away  from 
the  logical  interpretation  of  sense-datum  to  a  ready-made 
notion  of  it  brought  over  from  abstract  psychological 
inquiry.  The  belief  in  sensory  quales  as  somehow  forced 
upon  us,  and  forced  upon  us  at  large,  and  thus  condition- 
ing thought  wholly  ab  extra,  instead  of  determining  it  as 
instrumentalities  or  elements  in  its  own  scheme,  is  too 
fixed.  Such  qualities  are  forced  upon  us,  but  not  at  large. 
The  sensory  data  of  experience,  as  distinct  from  the  psychol- 
ogists' constructs,  always  come  in  a  context;  they  always 
appear  as  variations  in  a  continuum  of  values.  Even  the 
thunder  which  breaks  in  upon  me  (to  take  the  extreme  of 
apparent  discontinuity  and  irrelevancy)  disturbs  me  because 
it  is  taken  as  a  part  of  the  same  space-world  as  that  in 
which  my  chair  and  room  and  house  are  located;  and  it  is 


58  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

taken  as  an  influence  which  interrupts  and  disturbs,  because 
it  is  part  of  my  common  world  of  causes  and  effects. 
The  solution  of  continuity  is  itself  practical  or  teleological, 
and  thus  presupposes  and  affects  continuity  of  purpose, 
occupations,  and  means  in  a  life-process.  It  is  not  meta- 
physics, it  is  biology  which  enforces  the  idea  that  actual 
sensation  is  not  only  determined  as  an  event  in  a  world  of 
events,1  but  is  an  occurrence  occurring  at  a  certain  period  in 
the  evolution  of  experience,  marking  a  certain  point  in 
its  cycle,  and,  consequently — having  always  its  own  con- 
scious context  and  bearings — is  a  characteristic  function  of 
reconstruction  in  experience.2 

2.  Forms  of  thinking  data. — As  sensory  datum  is  material 
set  for  the  work  of  thought,  so  the  ideational  forms  with 
which  thought  does  its  work  are  apt  and  prompt  to  meet 
the  needs  of  the  material.  The  "accessory"3  notion  of 
ground  of  coherence  turns  out,  in  truth,  not  to  be  a  formal, 
or  external,  addition  to  the  data,  but  a  requalification  of 
them.  Thought  is  accessory  as  accomplice,  not  as  adden- 
dum. "Thought"  is  to  eliminate  mere  coincidence,  and  to 
assert  grounded  coherence.  Lotze  makes  it  absolutely  clear 
that  he  does  not  at  bottom  conceive  of  "thought"  as  an 
activity  "in  itself"  imposing  a  form  of  coherence;  but  that 
the  organizing  work  of  "thought"  is  only  the  progressive 
realization  of  an  inherent  unity,  or  system,  in  the  material 
experience.  The  specific  modes  in  which  thought  brings 
its  "accessory"  power  to  bear — names,  conception,  judg- 
ment, and  inference — are  successive  stages  in  the  adequate 
organization  of  the  matter  which  comes  to  us  first  as 
datum ;  they  are  successive  stages  of  the  effort  to  overcome  the 

1  Supra,  p.  30. 

2  For  the  identity  of  sensory  experience  with  the  point  of  greatest  strain  and 
stress  in  conflicting  or  tensional  experience,  see  "  The  Reflex  Arc  Concept  in  Psy- 
chology," Psychological  Review,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  57. 

3  For  the  "  accessory  "  character  of  thought,  see  LOTZE,  Vol.  I,  pp.  7, 25-7,  61,  etc. 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  59 

original  defects  of  the  datum.  Conception  starts  from  the 
given  universal  (the  common  element)  of  sense.  Yet  (and 
this  is  the  significant  point)  it  does  not  simply  abstract  this 
common  element,  and  consciously  generalize  it  as  over 
against  its  own  differences.  Such  a  "universal"  is  not 
coherence,  just  because  it  does  not  include  and  dominate  the 
temporal  and  local  heterogeneity.  The  true  concept  (see 
Vol.  I,  p.  38)  is  a  system  of  attributes,  held  together  on  the 
basis  of  some  ground,  or  determining,  dominating  principle — 
a  ground  which  so  controls  all  its  own  instances  as  to  make 
them  into  an  inwardly  connected  whole,  and  so  specifies  its 
own  limits  as  to  be  exclusive  of  all  else.  If  we  abstract  color 
as  the  common  element  of  various  colors,  the  result  is  not  a 
scientific  idea  or  concept.  Discovery  of  a  process  of  light- 
waves whose  various  rates  constitute  the  various  colors  of  the 
spectrum  gives  the  concept.  And  when  we  get  such  a  con- 
cept, the  former  mere  temporal  abruptness  of  color  experi- 
ences gives  way  to  organic  parts  of  a  color  system.  The 
logical  product — the  concept,. in  other  words — is  not  a  formal 
seal  or  stamp  ;  it  is  a  thoroughgoing  transformation  of  data 
in  a  given  sense. 

The  form  or  mode  of  thought  which  marks  the  continued 
transformation  of  the  data  and  the  idea  in  reference  to  each 
other  is  judgment.  Judgment  makes  explicit  the  assump- 
tion of  a  principle  which  determines  connection  within  an 
individualized  whole.  It  definitely  states  red  as  this  case  or 
instance  of  the  law  or  process  of  color,  and  thus  overcomes 
further  the  defect  in  subject-matter  or  data  still  left  by  con- 
ception.1 Now  judgment  logically  terminates  in  disjunction. 

JBosANQUET,  Logic  (Vol.  I,  pp.  30-34),  and  JONES  (Philosophy  of  Lotze,  1895,  chap. 
4)  have  called  attention  to  a  curious  inconsistency  in  Lotze's  treatment  of  judg- 
ment. On  one  hand,  the  statement  is  as  given  above.  Judgment  grows  out  of  con- 
ception in  making  explicit  the  determining  relation  of  universal  to  its  own  particu- 
lar, implied  in  conception.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  judgment  grows  not  out  of  con- 
ception at  all,  but  out  of  the  question  of  determining  connection  in  change.  Lotze's 
nominal  reason  for  this  latter  view  is  that  the  conceptual  world  is  purely  static; 


60  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

It  gives  a  universal  which  may  determine  any  one  of  a  num- 
ber of  alternative  denned  particulars,  but  which  is  arbitrary 
as  to  what  one  is  selected.  Systematic  inference  brings  to 
light  the  material  conditions  under  which  the  law,  or  domi- 
nating universal,  applies  to  this,  rather  than  that  alternative 
particular,  and  so  completes  the  ideal  organization  of  the 
subject-matter.  If  this  act  were  complete,  we  should  finally 
have  present  to  us  a  whole  on  which  we  should  know  the 
determining  and  effective  or  authorizing  elements,  and  the 
order  of  development  or  hierarchy  of  dependence,  in  which 
others  follow  from  them.1 

In  this  account  by  Lotze  of  the  operations  of  the  forms 
of  thought,  there  is  clearly  put  before  us  the  picture  of  a 

since  the  actual  world  is  one  of  change,  we  need  to  pass  upon  what  really  goes 
together  (is  causal)  in  the  change  as  distinct  from  such  as  are  merely  coincident. 
But,  as  Jones  clearly  shows,  it  is  also  connected  with  the  fact  that,  while  Lotze 
nominally  asserts  that  judgment  grows  out  of  conception,  he  treats  conception  as 
the  result  of  judgment  since  the  first  view  makes  judgment  a  mere  explication  of 
the  content  of  an  idea,  and  hence  merely  expository  or  analytic  (in  the  Kantian 
sense)  and  so  of  more  than  doubtful  applicability  to  reality.  The  affair  is  too 
large  to  discuss  here,  and  I  will  content  myself  with  referring  to  the  oscillation  be- 
tween conflicting  contents,  and  gradation  of  sensory  qualities  already  discussed  (p. 
56,  note).  It  is  judgment  which  grows  out  of  the  former,  because  judgment  is  the 
whole  situation  as  such;  conception  is  referable  to  the  latter  because  it  is  one 
abstraction  within  the  whole  (the  solution  of  possible  meanings  of  the  data)  just 
as  the  datum  is  another.  In  truth,  since  the  sensory  datum  is  not  absolute,  but 
comes  in  a  historical  context,  the  qualities  apprehended  as  constituting  the  datum 
simply  define  the  locus  of  conflict  in  the  entire  situation.  They  are  attributives  of 
the  contents-in-tension  of  the  colliding  things,  not  calm  untroubled  ultimates.  On 
pp.  33  and  34  of  Vol.  I,  Lotze  recognizes  (as  we  have  just  seen)  that,  as  matter  of 
fact,  it  is  both  sensory  qualities  in  their  systematic  grading,  or  quantitative  de- 
terminations (see  Vol.  I,  p.  43,  for  the  recognition  of  the  necessary  place  of  the 
quantitative  in  the  true  concept),  and  the  "rich  variety  of  local  and  temporal 
combinations,"  that  provoke  thought  and  supply  it  with  material.  But,  as  usual, 
he  treats  this  simply  as  a  historical  accident,  not  as  furnishing  the  key  to  the 
whole  matter.  In  fine,  while  the  heterogeneous  collocations  and  successions  con- 
stitute the  problematic  element  that  stimulates  thought, quantitative  determination 
of  the  sensory  quality  furnishes  one  of  the  two  chief  means  through  which  thought 
deals  with  the  problem.  It  is  a  reduction  of  the  original  colliding  contents  to  a  form 
in  which  the  effort  at  redintegration  gets  maximum  efficiency.  The  concept,  as  ideal 
meaning,  is  of  course  the  other  partner  to  the  transaction.  It  is  getting  the  various 
possible  meanings-of-the-data  into  such  shape  as  to  make  them  most  useful  in  con- 
struing the  data.  The  bearing  of  this  upon  the  subject  and  predicate  of  judgment 
cannot  be  discussed  here. 

i  See  Vol.  I,  pp.  38,  59,  61, 105, 129, 197,  for  Lotze's  treatment  of  these  distinctions. 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  61 

continuous  correlative  determination  of  datum  on  one  side 
and  of  idea  or  meaning  on  the  other,  till  experience  is  again 
integral,  data  thoroughly  denned  and  corrected,  and  ideas 
completely  incarnate  as  the  relevant  meaning  of  subject-mat- 
ter. That  we  have  here  in  outline  a  description  of  what 
actually  occurs  there  can  be  no  doubt.  But  there  is  as  little 
doubt  that  it  is  thoroughly  inconsistent  with  Lotze's  supposi- 
tion that  the  material  or  data  of  thought  is  precisely  the  same 
as  the  antecedents  of  thought ;  or  that  ideas,  conceptions,  are 
purely  mental  somewhats  brought  to  bear,  as  the  sole  essen- 
tial characteristics  of  thought,  extraneously  upon  a  material 
provided  ready-made.  It  means  but  one  thing:  The  main- 
tenance of  unity  and  wholeness  in  experience  through  con- 
flicting contents  occurs  by  means  of  a  strictly  correspondent 
setting  apart  of  fact  to  be  accurately  described  and  properly 
related,  and  meaning  to  be  adequately  construed  and  prop- 
erly referred.  The  datum  is  given  in  the  thought-situation, 
and  to  further  qualification  of  ideas  or  meanings.  But  even 
in  this  aspect  it  presents  a  problem.  To  find  out  what  is 
given  is  an  inquiry  which  taxes  reflection  to  the  uttermost. 
Every  important  advance  in  scientific  method  means  better 
agencies,  more  skilled  technique  for  simply  detaching  and 
describing  what  is  barely  there,  or  given.  To  be  able  to  find 
out  what  can  safely  be  taken  as  there,  as  given  in  any  par- 
ticular inquiry,  and  hence  be  taken  as  material  for  orderly  and 
verifiable  thinking,  for  fruitful  hypothesis-making,  for  enter- 
taining of  explanatory  and  interpretative  ideas,  is  one  phase 
of  the  effort  of  systematic  scientific  inquiry.  It  marks  its 
inductive  phase.  To  take  what  is  given  in  the  thought- 
situation,  for  the  sake  of  accomplishing  the  aim  of  thought 
(along  with  a  correlative  discrimination  of  ideas  or  meanings), 
as  if  it  were  given  absolutely,  or  apart  from  a  particular  his- 
toric situs  and  context,  is  the  fallacy  of  empiricism  as  a 
logical  theory.  To  regard  the  thought-forms  of  conception, 


62  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

judgment,  and  inference  as  qualifications  of  "  pure  thought, 
apart  from  any  difference  in  objects,"  instead  of  as  successive 
dispositions  in  the  progressive  organization  of  the  material 
(or  objects)  is  the  fallacy  of  rationalism.  Lotze  attempts  to 
combine  the  two,  thinking  thereby  to  correct  each  by  the 
other. 

Lotze  recognizes  the  futility  of  thought  if  the  sense- 
data  are  final,  if  they  alone  are  real,  the  truly  existent, 
self -justificatory  and  valid.  He  sees  that,  if  the  empiricist 
were  right  in  his  assumption  as  to  the  real  worth  of  the 
given  data,  thinking  would  be  a  ridiculous  pretender, 
either  toilfully  and  poorly  doing  over  again  what  needs  no 
doing,  or  making  a  wilful  departure  from  truth.  He  realizes 
that  thought  really  is  evoked  because  it  is  needed,  and  that 
it  has  a  work  to  do  which  is  not  merely  formal,  but  which 
effects  a  modification  of  the  subject-matter  of  experience. 
Consequently  he  assumes  a  thought-in-itself,  with  certain 
forms  and  modes  of  action  of  its  own,  a  realm  of  mean- 
ing possessed  of  a  directive  and  normative  worth  of  its 
own — the  root-fallacy  of  rationalism.  His  attempted  com- 
promise between  the  two  turns  out  to  be  based  on  the 
assumption  of  the  indefensible  ideas  of  both  —  the  notion 
of  an  independent  matter  of  thought,  on  one  side,  and  of 
an  independent  worth  or  value  of  thought-forms,  on  the  other. 
This  pointing  out  of  inconsistencies  becomes  stale  and 
unprofitable  save  as  we  bring  them  back  into  connection 
with  their  root-origin  —  the  erection  of  distinctions  that  are 
genetic  and  historic,  and  working  or  instrumental  divisions  of 
labor,  into  rigid  and  ready-made  differences  of  structural  real- 
ity. Lotze  clearly  recognizes  that  thought's  nature  is  depend- 
ent upon  its  aim,  its  aim  upon  its  problem,  and  this  upon  the 
situation  in  which  it  finds  its  incentive  and  excuse.  Its 
work  is  cut  out  for  it.  It  does  not  what  it  would,  but  what 
it  must.  As  Lotze  puts  it,  "Logic  has  to  do  with  thought, 


THE  DATUM  OF  THINKING  63 

not  as  it  would  be  under  hypothetical  conditions,  but  as  it  is  " 
(Vol.  I,  p.  33),  and  this  statement  is  made  in  explicit  combina- 
tion with  statements  to  the  effect  that  the  peculiarity  of  the 
material  of  thought  conditions  its  activity.  Similarly  he  says, 
in  a  passage  already  referred  to:  "The  possibility  and  the 
success  of  thought's  production  in  general  depends  upon  this 
original  constitution  and  organization  of  the  whole  world  of 
ideas,  a  constitution  which,  though  not  necessary  in  thought, 
is  all  the  more  necessary  to  make  thought  possible."1 

As  we  have  seen,  the  essential  nature  of  conception,  judg- 
ment, and  inference  is  dependent  upon  peculiarities  of  the 
propounded  material,  they  being  forms  dependent  for  their 
significance  upon  the  stage  of  organization  in  which  they 
begin. 

From  this  only  one  conclusion  is  suggested.  If  thought's 
nature  is  dependent  upon  its  actual  conditions  and  circum- 
stances, the  primary  logical  problem  is  to  study  thought-in- 
its-conditioning ;  it  is  to  detect  the  crisis  within  which 
thought  and  its  subject-matter  present  themselves  in  their 
mutual  distinction  and  cross-reference.  But  Lotze  is  so 
thoroughly  committed  to  a  ready-made  antecedent  of  some 
sort,  that  this  genetic  consideration  is  of  no  account  to  him. 
The  historic  method  is  a  mere  matter  of  psychology,  and  has 
no  logical  worth  (Vol.  I,  p.  2).  We  must  presuppose  a 
psychological  mechanism  and  psychological  material,  but 
logic  is  concerned  not  with  origin  or  history,  but  with 
authority,  worth,  value  (Vol.  I,  p.  10).  Again  :  "Logic  is 
not  concerned  with  the  manner  in  which  the  elements  util- 
ized by  thought  come  into  existence,  but  their  value 
after  they  have  somehow  come  into  existence,  for  the  carry- 
ing out  of  intellectual  operations"  (Vol.  I,  p.  34).  And 
finally  :  "I  have  maintained  throughout  my  work  that 
logic  cannot  derive  any  serious  advantage  from  a  discussion 

i  Vol.  I,  p.  36  ;  see  also  Vol.  II,  pp.  290,  291. 


64  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

of  the  conditions  under  which  thought  as  a  psychological 
process  comes  about.  The  significance  of  logical  forms.  .  .  . 
is  to  be  found  in  the  utterances  of  thought,  the  laws  which 
it  imposes,  after  or  during  the  act  of  thinking,  not  in  the 
conditions  which  lie  back  of  and  which  produce  thought."1 
Lotze,  in  truth,  represents  a  halting-stage  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  logical  theory.  He  is  too  far  along  to  be  contented 
with  the  reiteration  of  the  purely  formal  distinctions  of 
a  merely  formal  thought-by-itself.  He  recognizes  that 
thought  as  formal  is  the  form  of  some  matter,  and  has  its 
worth  only  as  organizing  that  matter  to  meet  the  ideal 
demands  of  reason;  and  that  "reason"  is  in  truth  only  an 
ideal  systematization  of  the  matter  or  content.  Consequently 
he  has  to  open  the  door  to  admit  "psychical  processes" 
which  furnish  this  material.  Having  let  in  the  material,  he 
is  bound  to  shut  the  door  again  in  the  face  of  the  processes 
from  which  the  material  proceeded — to  dismiss  them  as 
impertinent  intruders.  If  thought  gets  its  data  in  such  a 
surreptitious  manner,  there  is  no  occasion  for  wonder  that 
the  legitimacy  of  its  dealings  with  the  material  remains  an 
open  question.  Logical  theory,  like  every  branch  of  the 
philosophic  disciplines,  waits  upon  a  surrender  of  the  obsti- 
nate conviction  that,  while  the  work  and  aim  of  thought  is 
conditioned*  by  the  material  supplied  to  it,  yet  the  worth  of 
its  performances  is  something  to  be  passed  upon  in  complete 
abstraction  from  conditions  of  origin  and  development. 

i  Vol.  II,  p.  246  ;  the  same  is  reiterated  in  Vol.  II,  p.  250,  where  the  question  of 
origin  is  referred  to  as  a  corruption  in  logic.  Certain  psychical  acts  are  necessary  as 
"  conditions  and  occasions"  of  logical  operations,  but  the  "deep  gulf  between  psy- 
chical mechanism  and  thought  remains  unfilled.  " 


IV 

THOUGHT  AND  ITS  SUBJECT-MATTER :    THE  CONTENT  AND 
OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT 

IN  the  foregoing  discussion,  particularly  in  the  last  chap- 
ter, we  were  led  repeatedly  to  recognize  that  thought  has  its 
own  content.  At  times  Lotze  gives  way  to  the  tendency  to 
define  thought  entirely  in  terms  of  modes  and  forms  of 
activity  which  are  exercised  by  it  upon  a  strictly  foreign 
material.  But  two  motives  continually  push  him  in  the  other 
direction.  (1)  Thought  has  a  distinctive  work  to  do,  one 
which  involves  a  qualitative  transformation  of  (at  least)  the 
relationships  of  the  presented  matter;  as  fast  as  it  accom- 
plishes this  work,  the  subject-matter  becomes  somehow 
thought's  own.  As  we  have  just  seen,  the  data  are  pro- 
gressively organized  to  meet  thought's  ideal  of  a  complete 
whole,  with  its  members  interconnected  according  to  a 
determining  principle.  Such  progressive  organization 
throws  backward  doubt  upon  the  assumption  of  the  origi- 
nal total  irrelevancy  of  the  data  and  thought-form  to  each 
other.  (2)  A  like  motive  operates  from  the  side  of  the 
subject-matter.  As  merely  foreign  and  external,  it  is  too 
heterogeneous  to  lend  itself  to  thought's  exercise  and 
influence.  The  idea,  as  we  saw  in  the  first  chapter,  is  the 
convenient  medium  through  which  Lotze  passes  from  the 
purely  heterogeneous  psychical  impression  or  event,  which 
is  totally  irrelevant  to  thought's  purpose  and  working,  over 
to  a  state  of  affairs  which  can  reward  thought.  Idea  as 
meaning  forms  the  bridge  from  the  brute  factuality  of  the 
psychical  impression  over  to  the  coherent  value  of  thought's 
own  content. 

65 


66  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

We  have,  in  this  chapter,  to  consider  the  question  of  the 
idea  or  content  of  thought  from  two  points  of  view :  first, 
the  possibility  of  such  a  content  —  its  consistency  with 
Lotze's  fundamental  premises ;  secondly,  its  objective  charac- 
ter— its  validity  and  test. 

I.  The  question  of  the  possibility  of  a  specific  content 
of  thought  is  the  question  of  the  nature  of  the  idea  as 
meaning.  Meaning  is  the  characteristic  content  of  thought 
as  such.  We  have  thus  far  left  unquestioned  Lotze's  con- 
tinual assumption  of  meaning  as  a  sort  of  thought-unit;  the 
building-stone  of  thought's  construction.  In  his  treat- 
ment of  meaning,  Lotze's  contradictions  regarding  the 
antecedents,  data,  and  content  of  thought  reach  their  full 
conclusion.  He  expressly  makes  meaning  to  be  the  product 
of  thought's  activity  and  also  the  unreflective  material  out 
of  which  thought's  operations  grow. 

This  contradiction  has  been  worked  out  in  accurate  and 
complete  detail  by  Professor  Jones.1  He  summarizes  it  as 
follows  (p.  99):  "No  other  way  was  left  to  him  [Lotze] 
excepting  this  of  first  attributing  all  to  sense  and  afterwards 
attributing  all  to  thought,  and,  finally  of  attributing  it  to 
thought  only  because  it  was  already  in  its  material.  This 
seesaw  is  essential  to  his  theory ;  the  elements  of  knowl- 
edge as  he  describes  them  can  subsist  only  by  the  alternate 
robbery  of  each  other."  We  have  already  seen  how  strenu- 
ously Lotze  insists  upon  the  fact  that  the  given  subject-matter 
of  thought  is  to  be  regarded  wholly  as  the  work  of  a  physical 
mechanism,  "without  any  action  of  thought."2  But  Lotze  also 
states  that  if  the  products  of  the  psychical  mechanism  "  are 
to  admit  of  combination  in  the  definite  form  of  a  thought, 
they  each  require  some  previous  shaping  to  make  them  into 

i Philosophy  of  Lotze,  chap.  3,  "Thought  and  the  Preliminary  Process  of  Expe- 
rience." 

2  Vol.  I,  p.  38. 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT   67 

logical  building-stones  and  to  convert  them  from  impressions 
into  ideas.  Nothing  is  really  more  familiar  to  us  than  this  first 
operation  of  thought ;  the  only  reason  why  we  usually  over- 
look it  is  that  in  the  language  which  we  inherit,  it  is  already 
carried  out,  and  it  seems,  therefore,  to  belong  to  the  self- 
evident  presuppositions  of  thought,  not  to  its  own  specific 
work."1  And  again  (Vol.  I,  p.  23)  judgments  "can  consist 
of  nothing  but  combinations  of  ideas  which  are  no  longer 
mere  impressions:  every  such  idea  must  have  undergone  at 
least  the  simple  formation  mentioned  above."  Such  ideas 
are,  Lotze  goes  on  to  urge,  already  rudimentary  concepts — 
that  is  to  say,  logical  determinations. 

The  obviousness  of  the  logical  contradiction  of  attribut- 
ing to  a  preliminary  specific  work  of  thought  exactly  the 
condition  of  affairs  which  is  elsewhere  explicitly  attributed 
to  a  psychical  mechanism  prior  to  any  thought-activity, 
should  not  blind  us  to  its  meaning  and  relative  necessity. 
The  impression,  it  will  be  recalled,  is  a  mere  state  of  our 
own  consciousness  —  a  mood  of  ourselves.  As  such  it  has 
simply  de  facto  relations  as  an  event  to  other  similar  events. 
But  reflective  thought  is  concerned  with  the  relationship  of 
a  content  or  matter  to  other  contents.  Hence  the  impres- 
sion must  have  a  matter  before  it  can  come  at  all  within 
the  sphere  of  thought's  exercise.  How  shall  it  secure 
this  ?  Why,  by  a  preliminary  activity  of  thought  which 
objectifies  the  impression.  Blue  as  a  mere  sensuous  irrita- 
tion or  feeling  is  given  a  quality,  the  meaning  "blue" 
— blueness ;  the  sense-impression  is  objectified ;  it  is  pre- 
sented "no  longer  as  a  condition  which  we  undergo,  but 
as  a  something  which  has  its  being  and  its  meaning  in  itself, 
and  which  continues  to  be  what  it  is,  and  to  mean  what  it 
means  whether  we  are  conscious  of  it  or  not.  It  is  easy  to 
see  here  the  necessary  beginning  of  that  activity  which  we 

i  Vol.  I,  p.  13;  last  italics  mine. 


68  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

above  appropriated  to  thought  as  such  :  it  has  not  yet  got 
so  far  as  converting  coexistence  into  coherence.  It  has  first 
to  perform  the  previous  task  of  investing  each  single  impres- 
sion with  an  independent  validity,  without  which  the  later 
opposition  of  their  real  coherence  to  mere  coexistence  could 
not  be  made  in  any  intelligible  sense."1 

This  objectification,  which  converts  a  sensitive  state  into 
a  sensible  matter  to  which  the  sensitive  state  is  referred, 
also  gives  this  matter  "position,"  a  certain  typical  character. 
It  is  not  objectified  in  a  merely  general  way,  but  is  given  a 
specific  sort  of  objectivity.  Of  these  kinds  of  objectivity 
there  are  three  mentioned:  that  of  a  substantive  content; 
that  of  an  attached  dependent  content;  that  of  an  active 
relationship  connecting* the  various  contents  with  each  other. 
In  short,  we  have  the  types  of  meaning  embodied  in  language 
in  the  form  of  nouns,  adjectives,  and  verbs.  It  is  through  this 
preliminary  formative  activity  of  thought  that  reflective  or 
logical  thought  has  presented  to  it  a  world  of  meanings 
ranged  in  an  order  of  relative  independence  and  dependence, 
and  ranged  as  elements  in  a  complex  of  meanings  whose 
various  constituent  parts  mutually  influence  each  other's 
meanings.2 

As  usual,  Lotze  mediates  the  contradiction  between 
material  constituted  by  thought  and  the  same  material  just 
presented  to  thought,  by  a  further  position  so  disparate  to 
each  that,  taken  in  connection  with  each  in  a  pair,  and  by 
turns,  it  seems  to  bridge  the  gulf.  After  describing  the 
prior  constitutive  work  of  thought  as  above,  he  goes  on  to 
discuss  a  second  phase  of  thought  which  is  intermediary 
between  this  and  the  third  phase,  viz.,  reflective  thought 
proper.  This  second  activity  is  that  of  arranging  experi- 

1  Vol.  I,  p.  14;  italics  mine. 

2  See  Vol.  I,  pp.  16-20.   On  p.  22  this  work  is  declared  to  be  not  only  the  first, 
but  the  most  indispensable  of  all  thought's  operations. 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        69 

enced  quales  in  series  and  groups,  thus  ascribing  a  sort  of 
universal  or  common  somewhat  to  various  instances  (as 
already  described  ;  see  p.  55).  On  one  hand,  it  is  clearly 
stated  that  this  second  phase  of  thought's  activity  is  in  real- 
ity the  same  as  the  first  phase  :  since  all  objectification 
involves  positing,  since  positing  involves  distinction  of  one 
matter  from  others,  and  since  this  involves  placing  it  in  a 
series  or  group  in  which  each  is  measurably  marked  off,  as  to 
the  degree  and  nature  of  its  diversity,  from  every  other.  We 
are  told  that  we  are  only  considering  "  a  really  inseparable 
operation  "  of  thought  from  two  different  sides  :  first,  as  to 
the  effect  which  objectifying  thought  has  upon  the  matter 
as  set  over  against  the  feeling  subject,  secondly,  the  effect 
which  this  objectification  has  upon  the  matter  in  relation 
to  other  matters.1  Afterward,  however,  these  two  opera- 
tions are  declared  to  be  radically  different  in  type  and  nature. 
The  first  is  determinant  and  formative  ;  it  gives  ideas  "  the 
shape  without  which  the  logical  spirit  could  not  accept  them." 
In  a  way  it  dictates  "its  own  laws  to  its  object-matter."2 
The  second  activity  of  thought  is  rather  passive  and  recep- 
tive. It  simply  recognizes  what  is  already  there.  "Thought 
can  make  no  difference  where  it  finds  none  already  in  the 
matter  of  impressions."3  "The  first  universal,  as  we  saw, 
can  only  be  experienced  in  immediate  sensation.  It  is 
no  product  of  thought,  but  something  that  thought  finds 
already  in  existence." ' 

1  Vol.  I,  p.  26.  2  Vol.  I,  p.  35. 

3  Vol.  I,  p.  36  ;  see  the  strong  statements  already  quoted,  p.  30.  What  if  this 
canon  were  applied  in  the  first  act  of  thought  referred  to  above  :  the  original 
objectification  which  transforms  the  mere  state  into  an  abiding  quality  or  meaning? 
Suppose,  that  is,  it  were  said  that  the  first  objectifying  act  cannot  make  a  substan- 
tial (or  attached)  quale  out  of  a  mere  state  of  feeling;  it  must  find  the  distinction  it 
makes  there  already !  It  is  clear  we  should  at  once  get  a  regressus  ad  infinitum.  We 
here  find  Lotze  face  to  face  with  this  fundamental  dilemma :  thought  either  arbi- 
trarily forces  in  its  own  distinctions,  or  else  just  repeats  what  is  already  there  —  is 
either  falsifying  or  futile.  This  same  contradiction,  so  far  as  it  affects  the  impres- 
sion, has  already  been  discussed.  See  p.  31. 

*  Vol.  I,  p.  31. 


70  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY' 

The  obviousness  of  this  further  contradiction  is  paralleled 
only  by  its  inevitableness.  Thought  is  in  the  air,  is  arbi- 
trary and  wild  in  dealing  with  meanings,  unless  it  gets  its 
start  and  cue  from  actual  experience.  Hence  the  necessity 
of  insisting  upon  thought's  activity  as  just  recognizing  the 
contents  already  given.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  prior  to  the 
work  of  thought  there  is  to  Lotze  no  content  or  meaning.  It 
requires  a  work  of  thought  to  detach  anything  from  the  flux  of 
sense-irritations  and  invest  it  with  a  meaning  of  its  own.  This 
dilemma  is  inevitable  to  any  writer  who  declines  to  consider 
as  correlative  the  nature  of  thought- activity  and  thought- 
content  from  the  standpoint  of  their  generating  conditions  in 
the  movement  of  experience.  Viewed  from  such  a  standpoint 
the  principle  of  solution  is  clear  enough.  As  we  have  already 
seen  (p.  53),  the  internal  dissension  of  an  experience  leads 
to  detaching  certain  values  previously  absorptively  inte- 
grated into  the  concrete  experience  as  part  of  its  own  quali- 
tative coloring;  and  to  relegating  them,  for  the  time  being, 
(pending  integration  into  further  immediate  values  of  a  recon- 
stituted experience)  into  a  world  of  bare  meanings,  a  sphere 
qualified  as  ideal  throughout.  These  meanings  then  become 
the  tools  of  thought  in  interpreting  the  data,  just  as  the  sense- 
qualities  which  define  the  presented  situation  are  the  imme- 
diate object  to  thought.  The  two  as  mutually  referred  are 
content.  That  is,  the  datum  and  the  thought-mode  or  idea 
as  connected  are  the  object  of  thought. 

To  reach  this  unification  is  thought's  objective  or  goal. 
Exactly  the  same  value  is  idea,  as  either  tool  or  content,  ac- 
cording as  it  is  taken  as  instrumental  or  as  accomplishment. 
Every  successive  cross-section  of  the  thought-situation  pre- 
sents what  may  be  taken  for  granted  as  the  outcome  of 
previous  thinking,  and  consequently  as  the  determinant  of 
further  reflective  procedure.  Taken  as  defining  the  point 
reached  in  the  thought-function  and  serving  as  constituent 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        71 

unit  of  further  thought,  it  is  content.  Lotze's  instinct  is  sure 
in  identifying  and  setting  over  against  each  other  the  material 
given  to  thought  and  the  content  which  is  thought's  own 
"building-stone."  His  contradictions  arise  simply  from  the 
fact  that  his  absolute,  non-historic  method  does  not  permit 
him  to  interpret  this  joint  identity  and  distinction  in  a  work- 
ing, and  hence  relative,  sense. 

II.  The  question  of  how  the  possibility  of  meanings,  or 
thought-contents,  is  to  be  understood  merges  imperceptibly 
into  the  question  of  the  real  objectivity  or  validity  of  such 
contents.  The  difficulty  for  Lotze  is  the  now  familiar  one : 
So  far  as  his  logic  compels  him  to  insist  that  these  meanings 
are  the  possession  and  product  of  thought  (since  thought  is 
an  independent  activity),  the  ideas  are  merely  ideas ;  there  is 
no  test  of  objectivity  beyond  the  thoroughly  unsatisfactory 
and  formal  one  of  their  own  mutual  consistency.  In  reaction 
from  this  Lotze  is  thrown  back  upon  the  idea  of  these  con- 
tents as  the  original  matter  given  in  the  impressions  them- 
selves. Here  there  seems  to  be  an  objective  or  external  test 
by  which  the  reality  of  thought's  operations  may  be  tried  ;  a 
given  idea  is  verified  or  found  false  according  to  its  measure 
of  correspondence  with  the  matter  of  experience  as  such. 
But  now  we  are  no  better  off.  The  original  independence 
and  heterogeneity  of  impressions  and  of  thought  is  so  great 
that  there  is  no  way  to  compare  the  results  of  the  latter  with 
the  former.  We  cannot  compare  or  contrast  distinctions  of 
worth  with  bare  differences  of  factual  existence  (Vol.  I,  p.  2). 
The  standard  or  test  of  objectivity  is  so  thoroughly  external 
that  by  original  definition  it  is  wholly  outside  the  realm  of 
thought.  How  can  thought  compare  its  own  contents  with 
that  which  is  wholly  outside  itself  ? 

Or  again,  the  given  material  of  experience  apart  from 
thought  is  precisely  the  relatively  chaotic  and  unorganized; 
it  even  reduces  itself  to  a  mere  sequence  of  psychical  events. 


72  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

What  rational  meaning  is  there  in  directing  us  to  compare 
the  highest  results  of  scientific  inquiry  with  the  bare  se- 
quence of  our  own  states  of  feeling ;  or  even  with  the  origi- 
nal data  whose  fragmentary  and  uncertain  character  was  the 
exact  motive  for  entering  upon  scientific  inquiry  ?  How  can 
the  former  in  any  sense  give  a  check  or  test  of  the  value  of 
the  latter  ?  This  is  professedly  to  test  the  validity  of  a  sys- 
tem of  meanings  by  comparison  with  that  whose  defects  and 
errors  call  forth  the  construction  of  the  system  of  meanings 
by  which  to  rectify  and  replace  themselves.  Our  subsequent 
inquiry  simply  consists  in  tracing  some  of  the  phases  of  the 
characteristic  seesaw  from  one  to  the  other  of  the  two  horns 
of  the  now  familiar  dilemma:  either  thought  is  separate 
from  the  matter  of  experience,  and  then  its  validity  is  wholly 
its  own  private  business;  or  else  the  objective  results  of 
thought  are  already  in  the  antecedent  material,  and  then 
thought  is  either  unnecessary,  or  else  has  no  way  of  check- 
ing its  own  performances. 

1.  Lotze  assumes,  as  we  have  seen,  a  certain  independent 
validity  in  each  meaning  or  qualified  content,  taken  in  and  of 
itself.  "Blue"  has  a  certain  validity,  or  meaning,  in  and  of 
itself;  it  is  an  object  for  consciousness  as  such.  After  the 
original  sense-irritation  through  which  it  was  mediated  has 
entirely  disappeared,  it  persists  as  a  valid  idea,  as  a  mean- 
ing. Moreover,  it  is  an  object  or  content  of  thought  for 
others  as  well.  Thus  it  has  a  double  mark  of  validity:  in 
the  comparison  of  one  part  of  my  own  experience  with 
another,  and  in  the  comparison  of  my  experience  as  a  whole 
with  that  of  others.  Here  we  have  a  sort  of  validity  which 
does  not  raise  at  all  the  question  of  metaphysical  reality 
(Vol.  I,  pp.  14,  15).  Lotze  thus  seems  to  have  escaped 
from  the  necessity  of  employing  as  check  or  test  for  the 
validity  of  ideas  any  reference  to  a  real  outside  the  sphere 
of  thought  itself.  Such  terms  as  "conjunction,"  "fran- 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        73 

chise,"  "constitution,"  "algebraic  zero,"  etc.,  etc.,  claim  to 
possess  objective  validity.  Yet  none  of  these  professes 
to  refer  to  a  reality  beyond  thought.  Generalizing  this 
point  of  view,  validity  or  objectivity  of  meaning  means 
simply  that  which  is.  "identical  for  all  consciousness"  (Vol. 
I,  p.  3);  "it  is  quite  indifferent  whether  certain  parts  of  the 
world  of  thought  indicate  something  which  has  beside  an 
independent  reality  outside  of  thinking  minds,  or  whether 
all  that  it  contains  exists  only  in  the  thoughts  of  those  who 
think  it,  but  with  equal  validity  for  them  all"  (Vol.  I,  p.  16). 

So  far  it  seems  clear  sailing.  Difficulties,  however,  show 
themselves,  the  moment  we  inquire  what  is  meant  by  a 
self -identical  content  for  all  thought.  Is  this  to  be  taken  in 
a  static  or  in  a  dynamic  way?  That  is  to  say:  Does  it 
express  the  fact  that  a  given  content  or  meaning  is  de  facto 
presented  to  the  consciousness  of  all  alike?  Does  this 
coequal  presence  guarantee  an  objectivity  ?  Or  does  validity 
attach  to  a  given  meaning  or  content  in  so  far  as  it  directs 
and  controls  the  further  exercise  of  thinking,  and  thus  the 
formation  of  further  new  contents  of  consciousness? 

The  former  interpretation  is  alone  consistent  with  Lotze's 
notion  that  the  independent  idea  as  such  is  invested  with  a 
certain  validity  or  objectivity.  It  alone  is  consistent  with 
his  assertion  that  concepts  precede  judgments.  It  alone,  that 
is  to  say,  is  consistent  with  the  notion  that  reflective  think- 
ing has  a  sphere  of  ideas  or  meanings  supplied  to  it  at  the 
outset.  But  it  is  impossible  to  entertain  this  belief.  The 
stimulus  which,  according  to  Lotze,  goads  thought  on  from 
ideas  or  concepts  to  judgments  and  inferences,  is  in  truth 
simply  the  lack  of  validity,  of  objectivity  in  its  original  inde- 
pendent meanings  or  contents.  A  meaning  as  independ- 
ent is  precisely  that  which  is  not  invested  with  validity,  but 
which  is  a  mere  idea,  a  "notion,"  a  fancy,  at  best  a 
surmise  which  may  turn  out  to  be  valid  (and  of  course 


74  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

this  indicates  possible  reference) ;  a  standpoint  to  have  its 
value  determined  by  its  further  active  use.  "Blue"  as  a 
mere  detached  floating  meaning,  an  idea  at  large,  would 
not  gain  in  validity  simply  by  being  entertained  continu- 
ously in  a  given  consciousness;  or  by  being  made  at  one 
and  the  same  time  the  persistent  object  of  attentive  regard 
by  all  human  consciousnesses.  If  this  were  all  that  were 
required,  the  chimera,  the  centaur,  or  any  other  subjective 
construction,  could  easily  gain  validity.  "  Christian  Science" 
has  made  just  this  notion  the  basis  of  its  philosophy. 

The  simple  fact  is  that  in  such  illustrations  as  "blue," 
"franchise,"  "conjunction,"  Lotze  instinctively  takes  cases 
which  are  not  mere  independent  and  detached  meanings, 
but  which  involve  reference  to  a  region  of  cosmic  experi- 
ence, or  to  a  region  of  mutually  determining  social  activities. 
The  conception  that  reference  to  a  social  activity  does  not 
involve  the  same  sort  of  reference  of  thought  beyond  itself 
that  is  involved  in  physical  matters,  and  hence  may  be  taken 
quite  innocent  and  free  of  the  metaphysical  problem  of 
reference  to  reality  beyond  meaning,  is  one  of  the  strangest 
that  has  ever  found  lodgment  in  human  thinking.  Either 
both  physical  and  social  reference  or  neither,  is  metaphysi- 
cal; if  neither,  then  it  is  because  the  meaning  functions,  as 
it  originates,  in  a  specific  situation  which  carries  with  it 
its  own  tests  (see  p.  17).  Lotze's  conception  is  made  possible 
only  by  unconsciously  substituting  the  idea  of  object  as  con- 
tent of  thought  for  a  large  number  of  persons  (or  a  de  facto 
somewhat  for  every  consciousness),  for  the  genuine  defini- 
tion of  object  as  a  determinant  in  a  scheme  of  experience. 
The  former  is  consistent  with  Lotze's  conception  of  thought, 
but  wholly  indeterminate  as  to  validity  or  intent.  The 
latter  is  the  test  used  experimentally  in  all  concrete  thinking, 
but  involves  a  radical  transformation  of  all  Lotze's  assump- 
tions. A  given  idea  of  the  conjunction  of  the  franchise,  or 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        75 

of  blue,  is  valid,  not  because  everybody  happens  to  entertain 
it,  but  because  it  expresses  the  factor  of  control  or  direction 
in  a  given  movement  of  experience.  The  test  of  validity 
of  idea1  is  its  functional  or  instrumental  use  in  effecting 
the  transition  from  a  relatively  conflicting  experience  to  a 
relatively  integrated  one.  If  Lotze's  view  were  correct, 
"blue"  valid  once  would  be  valid  always — even  when  red 
or  green  were  actually  called  for  to  fulfil  specific  conditions. 
This  is  to  say  validity  always  refers  to  rightfulness  or 
adequacy  of  performance  in  an  asserting  of  connection — not 
to  the  meaning  as  detached  and  contemplated. 

If  we  refer  again  to  the  fact  that  the  genuine  antecedent 
of  thought  is  a  situation  which  is  tensional  as  regards  its 
existing  status,  or  disorganized  in  its  structural  elements, 
yet  organized  as  emerging  out  of  the  unified  experience 
of  the  past  and  as  striving  as  a  whole,  or  equally  in  all  its 
phases,  to  reinstate  an  experience  harmonized  in  make-up,  we 
can  easily  understand  how  certain  contents  may  be  detached 
and  held  apart  as  meanings  or  references,  actual  or  possible 
(according  as  they  are  viewed  with  reference  to  the  past 
or  to  the  future).  We  can  understand  how  such  detached 
contents  may  be  of  use  in  effecting  a  review  of  the  entire 
experience,  and  as  affording  standpoints  and  methods  of  a 
reconstruction  which  will  maintain  the  integrity  of  expe- 
rience. We  can  understand  how  validity  of  meaning  is 
measured  by  reference  to  something  which  is  not  mere 
meaning;  by  reference  to  something  which  lies  beyond  the 
idea  as  such — viz.,  the  reconstitution  of  an  experience  into 
which  thought  enters  as  mediator.  That  paradox  of  ordinary 
experience  and  of  scientific  inquiry  by  which  objectivity  is 
given  alike  to  matter  of  perception  and  to  conceived  relations 

1  As  we  have  already  seen,  the  concept,  the  meaning  as  such,  is  always  a  factor 
or  status  in  a  reflective  situation;  it  is  always  a  predicate  of  judgment,  in  use  in 
interpreting  and  developing  the  logical  subject,  or  datum  of  perception.  See 
Study  VII,  on  the  Hypothesis. 


76  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

— to  facts  and  to  laws — affords  no  peculiar  difficulty,  because 
we  see  that  the  test  of  objectivity  is  everywhere  the  same: 
anything  is  objective  in  so  far  as,  through  the  medium 
of  conflict,  it  controls  the  movement  of  experience  in  its 
reconstructive  transition  from  one  unified  form  to  another. 
There  is  not  first  an  object,  whether  of  sense-perception  or 
of  conception,  which  afterward  somehow  exercises  this  con- 
trolling influence;  but  the  objective  is  such  in  virtue  of  the 
exercise  of  function  of  control.  It  may  only  control  the  act 
of  inquiry ;  it  may  only  set  on  foot  doubt,  but  this  is  direc- 
tion of  subsequent  experience,  and,  in  so  far,  is  a  token  of 
objectivity. 

So  much  for  the  thought-content  or  meaning  as  having 
a  validity  of  its  own.  It  does  not  have  it  as  isolated  or 
given  or  static ;  it  has  it  in  its  dynamic  reference,  its  use  in 
determining  further  movement  of  experience.  In  other 
words,  the  "meaning"  or  idea  as  such,  having  been  selected 
and  made-up  with  reference  to  performing  a  certain  office  in 
the  evolution  of  a  unified  experience,  can  be  tested  in  no 
other  way  than  by  discovering  whether  it  does  what  it  was 
intended  to  do  and  what  it  purports  to  do.1 

2.  Lotze  has  to  wrestle  with  this  question  of  validity  in  a 
further  aspect:  What  constitutes  the  objectivity  of  thinking 
as  a  total  attitude,  activity,  or  function?  According  to  his 
own  statement,  the  meanings  or  valid  ideas  are  after  all  only 
building-stones  for  logical  thought.  Validity  is  thus  not  a 
question  of  them  in  their  independent  existences,  but  of  their 
mutual  reference  to  each  other.  Thinking  is  the  process  of 

i  ROYCE,  in  his  World  and  Individual,  Vol.  I,  chaps.  6  and  7,  has  criticised  the 
conception  of  meaning  as  valid,  but  in  a  way  which  implies  that  there  is  a  difference 
between  validity  and  reality,  in  the  sense  that  the  meaning  or  content  of  the  valid 
idea  becomes  real  only  when  it  is  experienced  in  direct  feeling.  The  above  implies, 
of  course,  a  difference  between  validity  and  reality,  but  finds  the  test  of  validity  in 
exercise  of  the  function  of  direction  or  control  to  which  the  idea  makes  pretension 
or  claim.  The  same  point  of  view  would  profoundly  modify  Royce's  interpretation 
of  what  he  terms  "inner"  and  "outer"  meaning.  See  MOORE,  The  University  of 
Chicago  Decennial  Publications,  Vol.  Ill,  on  "Existence,  Meaning,  and  Reality." 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        77 

instituting  these  mutual  references;  of  building  up  the 
various  scattered  and  independent  building-stones  into  the 
coherent  system  of  thought.  What  is  the  validity  of  the 
various  forms  of  thinking  which  find  expression  in  the 
various  types  of  judgment  and  in  the  various  forms  of  infer- 
ence ?  Categorical,  hypothetical,  disjunctive  judgment ;  infer- 
ence by  induction,  by  analogy,  by  mathematical  equation; 
classification,  theory  of  explanation — all  these  are  processes 
of  reflection  by  which  mutual  connection  in  an  individualized 
whole  is  given  to  the  fragmentary  meanings  or  ideas  with 
which  thought  as  it  sets  out  is  supplied.  What  shall  we  say 
of  the  validity  of  such  processes  ? 

On  one  point  Lotze  is  quite  clear.  These  various  logical 
acts  do  not  really  enter  into  the  constitution  of  the  valid 
world.  The  logical  forms  as  such  are  maintained  only  in 
the  process  of  thinking.  The  world  of  valid  truth  does  not 
undergo  a  series  of  contortions  and  evolutions,  paralleling  in 
any  way  the  successive  steps  and  missteps,  the  succession  of 
tentative  trials,  withdrawals,  and  retracings,  which  mark  the 
course  of  our  own  thinking.1 

Lotze  is  explicit  upon  the  point  that  it  is  only  the  thought- 
content  in  which  the  process  of  thinking  issues  that  has  ob- 
jective validity ;  the  act  of  thinking  is  "  purely  and  simply  an 
inner  movement  of  our  own  minds,  made  necessary  to  us  by 
reason  of  the  constitution  of  our  nature  and  of  our  place 
in  the  world"  (Vol.  II,  p.  279). 

Here  the  problem  of  validity  presents  itself  as  the  prob- 
lem of  the  relation  of  the  act  of  thinking  to  its  own  product. 

1  Vol.  II,  pp.  257,  265  and  in  general  Book  III,  chap.  4.  It  is  significant  that 
thonght  itself,  appearing  as  an  act  of  thinking  over  against  its  own  content,  is  here 
treated  as  psychical.  Even  this  explicit  placing  of  thinking  in  the  psychical  sphere, 
along  with  sensations  and  the  associative  mechanism,  does  not,  however,  lead  Lotze 
to  reconsider  his  statement  that  the  psychological  problem  is  totally  irrelevant  and 
even  corrupting  as  regards  the  logical.  Consequently,  as  we  see  in  the  text,  it  only 
gives  him  one  more  difficulty  to  wrestle  with :  how  a  process  which  is  ex  officio  purely 
psychical  and  subjective  can  yet  yield  results  which  are  valid,  in  a  logical,  to  say 
nothing  of  an  ontological,  sense. 


78  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

In  his  solution  Lotze  uses  two  metaphors:  one  derived  from 
building  operations,  the  other  from  traveling.  The  con- 
struction of  a  building  requires  of  necessity  certain  tools  and 
extraneous  constructions,  stagings,  scaffoldings,  etc.,  which 
are  necessary  to  effect  the  final  construction,  but  yet  which 
do  not  enter  into  the  building  as  such.  The  activity  has  an 
instrumental,  though  not  a  constitutive,  value  as  regards  its 
product.  Similarly,  in  order  to  get  a  view  from  the  top  of 
a  mountain — this  view  being  the  objective — the  traveler 
has  to  go  trough  preliminary  movements  along  devious 
courses.  These  again  are  antecedent  prerequisites,  but  do 
not  constitute  a  portion  of  the  attained  view. 

The  problem  of  thought  as  activity,  as  distinct  from 
thought  as  content,  opens -up  altogether  too  large  a  question 
to  receive  complete  consideration  at  this  point.  Fortunately, 
however,  the  previous  discussion  enables  us  to  narrow  the 
point  which  is  in  issue  just  here.  It  is  once  more  the  ques- 
tion whether  the  activity  of  thought  is  to  be  regarded  as  an 
independent  function  supervening  entirely  from  without 
upon  antecedents,  and  directed  from  without  upon  data;  or 
whether  it  marks  merely  a  phase  of  the  transformation  which 
the  course  of  experience  (whether  practical,  or  artistic,  or 
socially  affectional  or  whatever)  undergoes  in  entering  into 
a  tensional  Status  where  the  maintenance  of  its  harmony 
of  content  is  problematic  and  hence  an  aim.  If  it  be 
the  latter,  a  thoroughly  intelligent  sense  can  be  given  to 
the  proposition  that  the  activity  of  thinking  is  instrumental, 
and  that  its  worth  is  found,  not  in  its  own  successive  states 
as  such,  but  in  the  result  in  which  it  comes  to  conclusion. 
But  the  conception  of  thinking  as  an  independent  activity 
somehow  occurring  after  an  independent  antecedent,  playing 
upon  an  independent  subject-matter,  and  finally  effecting 
an  independent  result,  presents  us  with  just  one  miracle  the 
more. 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        79 

I  do  not  question  the  strictly  instrumental  character  of 
thinking.  The  problem  lies  not  here,  but  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  the  nature  of  the  organ  and  instrument.  The  diffi- 
culty with  Lotze's  position  is  that  it  forces  us  into  the 
assumption  of  a  means  and  an  end  which  are  simply  and 
only  external  to  each  other,  and  yet  necessarily  dependent 
upon  each  other — a  position  which,  whenever  found,  is  so 
thoroughly  self -contradictory  as  to  necessitate  critical  recon- 
sideration of  the  premises  which  lead  to  it.  Lotze  vibrates 
between  the  notion  of  thought  as  a  tool  in  the  external  sense, 
a  mere  scaffolding  to  a  finished  building  in  which  it  has  no 
part  nor  lot,  and  the  notion  of  thought  as  an  immanent  tool, 
as  a  scaffolding  which  is  an  integral  part  of  the  very  opera- 
tion of  building,  and  set  up  for  the  sake  of  the  building- 
activity  which  is  carried  on  effectively  only  with  and  through 
a  scaffolding.  Only  in  the  former  case  can  the  scaffolding  be 
considered  as  a  mere  tool.  In  the  latter  case  the  external 
scaffolding  is  not  itself  the  instrumentality;  the  actual  tool 
is  the  action  of  erecting  the  building,  and  this  action  involves 
the  scaffolding  as  a  constituent  part  of  itself.  The  work  of 
erecting  is  not  set  over  against  the  completed  building  as 
mere  means  to  an  end;  it  is  the  end  taken  in  process  or 
historically,  longitudinally  viewed.  The  scaffolding,  more- 
over, is  not  an  external  means  to  the  process  of  erecting, 
but  an  organic  member  of  it.  It  is  no  mere  accident  of 
language  that  "building"  has  a  double  sense — meaning  at 
once  the  process  and  the  finished  product.  The  outcome  of 
thought  is  the  thinking  activity  carried  on  to  its  own  com- 
pletion; the  activity,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  outcome 
taken  anywhere  short  of  its  own  realization,  and  thereby  still 
going  on. 

The  only  consideration  which  prevents  easy  and  imme- 
diate acceptance  of  this  view  is  the  notion  of  thinking  as 
something  purely  formal.  It  is  strange  that  the  empiricist 


80  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

does  not  see  that  his  insistence  upon  a  matter  extrane- 
ously  given  to  thought  only  strengthens  the  hands  of  the 
rationalist  with  his  claim  of  thinking  as  an  independent 
activity,  separate  from  the  actual  make-up  of  the  affairs 
of  experience.  Thinking  as  a  merely  formal  activity  exer- 
cised upon  certain  sensations  or  images  or  objects  sets  forth 
an  absolutely  meaningless  proposition.  The  psychological 
identification  of  thinking  with  the  process  of  association  is 
much  nearer  the  truth.  It  is,  indeed,  on  the  way  to  the 
truth.  We  need  only  to  recognize  that  association  is  of  con- 
tents or  matters  or  meanings,  not  of  ideas  as  bare  exist- 
ences or  events;  and, that  the  type  of  association  we  call 
thinking  differs  from  the  associations  of  casual  fancy  and 
revery  in  an  element  of  control  by  reference  to  an  end 
which  determines  the  fitness  and  thus  the  selection  of  the 
associates,  to  apprehend  how  completely  thinking  is  a  recon- 
structive movement  of  actual  contents  of  experience  in  rela- 
tion to  each  other,  and  for  the  sake  of  a  redintegration  of  a 
conflicting  experience. 

There  is  no  miracle  in  the  fact  that  tool  and  material  are 
adapted  to  each  other  in  the  process  of  reaching  a  valid  con- 
clusion. Were  they  external  in  origin  to  each  other  and 
to  the  result,  the  whole  affair  would,  indeed,  present  an 
insoluble  problem  —  so  insoluble  that,  if  this  were  the  true 
condition  of  affairs,  we  never  should  even  know  that  there 
was  a  problem.  But,  in  truth,  both  material  and  tool  have 
been  secured  and  determined  with  reference  to  economy  and 
efficiency  in  effecting  the  end  desired — the  maintenance  of 
a  harmonious  experience.  The  builder  has  discovered  that 
his  building  means  building  tools,  and  also  building  mate- 
rial. Each  has  been  slowly  evolved  with  reference  to  its  fit 
employ  in  the  entire  function;  and  this  evolution  has  been 
checked  at  every  point  by  reference  to  its  own  correspondent. 
The  carpenter  has  not  thought  at  large  on  his  building  and 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        81 

then  constructed  tools  at  large,  but  has  thought  of  his  build- 
ing in  terms  of  the  material  which  enters  into  it,  and  through 
that  medium  has  come  to  the  consideration  of  the  tools 
which  are  helpful.  Life  proposes  to  maintain  at  all  hazards 
the  unity  of  its  own  process.  Experience  insists  on  being 
itself,  on  securing  integrity  even  through  and  by  means  of 
conflict. 

This  is  not  a  formal  question,  but  one  of  the  placing  and 
relations  of  the  matters  or  values  actually  entering  into  ex- 
perience. And  this  in  turn  determines  the  taking  up  of  just 
those  mental  attitudes,  and  the  employing  of  just  those 
intellectual  operations,  which  most  effectively  handle  and 
organize  the  material.  Thinking  is  adaptation  to  an  end 
through  the  adjustment  of  particular  objective  contents. 

The  thinker,  like  the  carpenter,  is  at  once  stimulated  and 
checked  in  every  stage  of  his  procedure  by  the  particular 
situation  which  confronts  him.  A  person  is  at  the  stage  of 
wanting  a  new  house:  well  then,  his  materials  are  available 
resources,  the  price  of  labor,  the  cost  of  building,  the  state 
and  needs  of  his  family,  profession,  etc. ;  his  tools  are  paper 
and  pencil  and  compass,  or  possibly  the  bank  as  a  credit 
instrumentality,  etc.  Again,  the  work  is  beginning.  The 
foundations  are  laid.  This  in  turn  determines  its  own  spe- 
cific materials  and  tools.  Again,  the  building  is  almost 
ready  for  occupancy.  The  concrete  process  is  that  of  taking 
away  the  scaffolding,  clearing  up  the  grounds,  furnishing 
and  decorating  rooms,  etc.  This  specific  operation  again 
determines  its  own  fit  or  relevant  materials  and  tools.  It 
defines  the  time  and  mode  and  manner  of  beginning  and 

1  Professor  James's  satisfaction  in  the  contemplation  of  bare  pluralism,  of  dis- 
connection, of  radical  having-nothing-to-do-with-one-another,  is  a  case  in  point. 
The  satisfaction  points  to  an  aesthetic  attitude  in  which  the  brute  diversity  becomes 
itself  one  interesting  object ;  and  thus  unity  asserts  itself  in  its  own  denial.  When 
discords  are  hard  and  stubborn,  and  intellectual  and  practical  unification  are  far  to 
seek,  nothing  is  commoner  than  the  device  of  securing  the  needed  unity  by  recourse 
to  an  emotion  which  feeds  on  the  very  brute  variety.  Religion  and  art  and  romantic 
affection  are  full  of  examples. 


82      ,  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

ceasing  to  use  them.  Logical  theory  will  get  along  as  well 
as  does  reflective  practice,  when  it  sticks  close  by  and 
observes  the  directions  and  checks  inherent  in  each  successive 
phase  of  the  evolution  of  the  cycle  of  experiencing.  The 
problem  in  general  of  validity  of  the  thinking  process  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  validity  of  this  or  that  process  arises  only 
when  thinking  is  isolated  from  its  historic  position  and  its 
material  context. 

3.  But  Lotze  is  not  yet  done  with  the  problem  of  validity, 
even  from  his  own  standpoint.  The  ground  shifts  again 
under  his  feet.  It  is  no  longer  a  question  of  the  validity  of 
the  idea  or  meaning  with  which  thought  is  supposed  to  set 
out ;  it  is  no  longer  a  question  of  the  validity  of  the  process 
of  thinking  in  reference  to  its  own  product;  it  is  the  ques- 
tion of  the  validity  of  the  product.  Supposing,  after  all, 
that  the  final  meaning,  or  logical  idea,  is  thoroughly  coher- 
ent and  organized ;  supposing  it  is  an  object  for  all  conscious- 
ness as  such.  Once  more  arises  the  question:  What  is  the 
validity  of  even  the  most  coherent  and  complete  idea? — a 
question  which  rises  and  will  not  down.  We  may  recon- 
struct our  notion  of  the  chimera  until  it  ceases  to  be  an 
independent  idea  and  becomes  a  part  of  the  system  of  Greek 
mythology.  Has  it  gained  in  validity  in  ceasing  to  be 
an  independent  myth,  in  becoming  an  element  in  sys- 
tematized myth?  Myth  it  was  and  myth  it  remains. 
Mythology  does  not  get  validity  by  growing  bigger.  How 
do  we  know  the  same  is  not  the  case  with  the  ideas  which 
are  the  product  of  our  most  deliberate  and  extended  scien- 
tific inquiry?  The  reference  again  to  the  content  as  the 
self -identical  object  of  all  consciousness  proves  nothing; 
the  matter  of  a  hallucination  does  not  gain  worth  in  propor- 
tion to  its  social  contagiousness.  Or  the  reference  proves 
that  we  have  not  as  yet  reached  any  conclusion,  but  are  enter- 
taining a  hypothesis — since  social  validity  is  not  a  matter  of 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        83 

mere  common  content,  but  of  securing  participation  in  a 
commonly  adjudged  social  experience  through  action  directed 
thereto  and  directed  by  consensus  of  judgment. 

According  to  Lotze,  the  final  product  is,  after  all,  still 
thought.  Now,  Lotze  is  committed  once  for  all  to  the  notion 
that  thought,  in  any  form,  is  directed  by  and  at  an  outside 
reality.  The  ghost  haunts  him  to  the  last.  How,  after  all, 
does  even  the  ideally  perfect  valid  thought  apply  or  refer  to 
reality?  Its  genuine  subject  is  still  beyond  itself.  At  the 
last  Lotze  can  dispose  of  this  question  only  by  regarding 
it  as  a  metaphysical,  not  a  logical,  problem  (Vol.  II,  pp. 
281,  282).  In  other  words,  logically  speaking,  we  are  at  the 
end  just  exactly  where  we  were  at  the  beginning — in  the 
sphere  of  ideas,  and  of  ideas  only,  plus  a  consciousness  of 
the  necessity  of  referring  these  ideas  to  a  reality  which  is 
beyond  them,  which  is  utterly  inaccessible  to  them,  which  is 
out  of  reach  of  any  influence  which  they  may  exercise,  and 
which  transcends  any  possible  comparison  with  their  results. 
"It  is  vain,"  says  Lotze,  "to  shrink  from  acknowledging  the 
circle  here  involved  ....  all  we  know  of  the  external  world 
depends  upon  the  ideas  of  it  which  are  within  us"  (Vol.  II, 
p.  185).  "It  is  then  this  varied  world  of  ideas  within  us 
which  forms  the  sole  material  directly  given  to  us  "  (Vol.  II, 
p.  186).  As  it  is  the  only  material  given  to  us,  so  it  is  the 
only  material  with  which  thought  can  end.  To  talk  about 
knowing  the  external  world  through  ideas  which  are  merely 
within  us  is  to  talk  of  an  inherent  self-contradiction.  There 
is  no  common  ground  in  which  the  external  world  and  our 
ideas  can  meet.  In  other  words,  the  original  implication  of 
a  separation  between  an  independent  thought-material  and 
an  independent  thought-function  and  purpose  lands  us  inev- 
itably in  the  metaphysics  of  subjective  idealism,  plus  a 
belief  in  an  unknown  reality  beyond,  which  unknowable  is  yet 
taken  as  the  ultimate  test  of  the  value  of  our  ideas  as  just 


84  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

subjective.  The  subjectivity  of  the  psychical  event  infects 
at  the  last  the  meaning  or  ideal  object.  Because  it  has  been 
taken  to  be  something  "in  itself,"  thought  is  also  something 
"in  itself,"  and  at  the  end,  after  all  our  maneuvering  we  are 
where  we  began :  —  with  two  separate  disparates,  one  of 
meaning,  but  no  existence,  the  other  of  existence,  but  no 
meaning. 

The  other  aspect  of  Lotze' s  contradiction  which  completes 
the  circle  is  clear  when  we  refer  to  his  original  propositions, 
and  recall  that  at  the  outset  he  was  compelled  to  regard  the 
origination  and  conjunctions  of  the  impressions,  the  elements 
of  ideas,  as  themselves  the  effects  exercised  by  a  world  of 
things  already  in  existence  (see  p.  31).  He  sets  up  an 
independent  world  of  thought,  and  yet  has  to  confess  that 
both  at  its  origin  and  termination  it  points  with  absolute 
necessity  to  a  world  beyond  itself.  Only  the  stubborn 
refusal  to  take  this  initial  and  terminal  reference  of  thought 
beyond  itself  as  having  a  historic  meaning,  indicating  a  par- 
ticular place  of  generation  and  a  particular  point  of  fulfilment 
in  the  drama  of  evolving  experience,  compels  Lotze  to  give 
such  bifold  objective  reference  a  purely  metaphysical  turn. 

When  Lotze  goes  on  to  say  (Vol.  II,  p.  191)  that  the 
measure  of  truth  of  particular  parts  of  experience  is  found  in 
asking  whether,  when  judged  by  thought,  they  are  in  harmony 
with  other  parts  of  experience ;  when  he  goes  on  to  say  that 
there  is  no  sense  in  trying  to  compare  the  entire  world  of 
ideas  with  a  reality  which  is  non-existent,  excepting  as  it 
itself  should  become  an  idea,  Lotze  lands  where  he  might 
better  have  frankly  commenced.1  He  saves  himself  from  utter 

1  Lotze  even  goes  so  far  in  this  connection  as  to  say  that  the  antithesis  between 
OUT  ideas  and  the  objects  to  which  they  are  directed  is  itself  a  part  of  the  world  of 
ideas  (Vol.  II,  p.  192).  Barring  the  phrase  "  world  of  ideas  "  (as  against  world  of 
continuous  experiencing)  he  need  only  have  commenced  at  this  point  to  have  traveled 
straight  and  arrived  somewhere.  But  it  is  absolutely  impossible  to  hold  both  this 
view  and  that  of  the  original  independent  existence  of  something  given  to  and  in 
thought  and  an  independent  existence  of  a  thought-activity,  thought-forms,  and 
thought-contents. 


THE  CONTENT  AND  OBJECT  OF  THOUGHT        85 

skepticism  only  by  claiming  that  the  explicit  assumption  of 
skepticism, -the  need  of  agreement  of  a  ready-made  idea  as 
such,  with  an  extraneous  independent  material  as  such,  is 
meaningless.  He  defines  correctly  the  work  of  thought  as 
consisting  in  harmonizing  the  various  portions  of  experi- 
ence with  each  other:  a  definition  which  has  meaning  only 
in  connection  with  the  fact  that  experience  is  continually  inte- 
grating itself  into  a  wholeness  of  coherent  meaning  deep- 
ened in  significance  by  passing  through  an  inner  distraction 
in  which  by  means  of  conflict  certain  contents  are  rendered 
partial  and  hence  objectively  conscious.  In  this  case  the 
test  of  thought  is  the  harmony  or  unity  of  experience  actually 
effected.  In  that  sense  the  test  of  reality  is  beyond  thought, 
as  thought,  just  as  at  the  other  limit  thought  originates  out 
of  a  situation  which  is  not  reflectional  in  character.  Inter- 
pret this  before  and  beyond  in  a  historic  sense,  as  an  affair  of 
the  place  occupied  and  rCle  played  by  thinking  as  a  function 
in  experience  in  relation  to  other  functions,  and  the  inter- 
mediate and  instrumental  character  of  thought,  its  dependence 
upon  unreflective  antecedents  for  its  existence,  and  upon  a 
consequent  experience  for  its  test  of  final  validity,  becomes 
significant  and  necessary.  Taken  at  large,  it  plunges  us  in 
the  depths  of  a  hopelessly  complicated  and  self-revolving 
metaphysic. 


A  CRITICAL  STUDY  OF  BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF 
JUDGMENT1 

BOSANQUET'S  theory  of  the  judgment,  in  common  with  all 
such  theories  of  the  judgment,  necessarily  involves  the 
metaphysical  problem  of  the  nature  of  reality  and  of  the 
relation  of  thought  to  reality.  That  the  judgment  is  the 
function  by  which  knowledge  is  attained  is  a  proposition 
which  would  meet  with  universal  acceptance.  But  knowl- 
edge is  itself  a  relation  of  some  sort  between  thought  and 
reality.  The  view  which  any  logician  adopts  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  knowledge-process  is  accordingly  conditioned 
by  his  metaphysical  presuppositions  as  to  the  nature  of 
reality.  It  is  equally  true  that  the  theory  of  the  judgment 
developed  from  any  metaphysical  standpoint  serves  as  a 
test  of  the  validity  of  that  standpoint.  We  shall  attempt  in 
the  present  paper  to  show  how  Bosanquet's  theory  of  the 
judgment  develops  from  his  view  of  the  nature  of  reality, 
and  to  inquire  whether  the  theory  succeeds  in  giving  such 
an  account  of  the  knowledge-process  as  to  corroborate  the 
presupposition  underlying  it. 

Bosanquet  defines  judgment  as  "the  intellectual  function 
which  defines  reality  by  significant  ideas  and  in  so  doing 
affirms  the  reality  of  those  ideas"  (p.  104).2  The  form  of 
the  definition  suggests  the  nature  of  his  fundamental  prob- 

1  The  criticism  of  Bosanquet's  theory  of  the  judgment  offered  in  this  paper  is 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  theory  of  the  judgment  developed  by  Professor  John 
Dewey,  in  his  lectures  on  "  The  Theory  of  Logic."    While  the  chief  interest  of  the 
paper,  as  the  title  implies,  is  critical,  it  has  been  necessary  to  devote  a  portion  of  it 
to  the  exposition  of  the  point  of  view  from  which  the  criticism  is  made.— H.  B.  T. 

2  The  references  throughout  this  paper  are  to  the  pages  of  Vol.  I  of  BEBNAED 
BOSANQUET,  Logic  or  the  Morphology  of  Knowledge,  Oxford,  1888. 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  or  JUDGMENT  87 

lem.  There  is,  on  the  one  hand,  a  world  of  reality  which 
must  be  regarded  as  having  existence  outside  of  and  inde- 
pendently of  the  thoughts  or  ideas  we  are  now  applying  to 
it;  and  there  is,  on  the  other  hand,  a  world  of  ideas  whose 
value  is  measured  by  the  possibility  of  applying  them  to 
reality,  of  qualifying  reality  by  them.  The  judgment  is  the 
function  which  makes  the  connection  between  these  two 
worlds.  If  judgment  merely  brought  one  set  of  ideas  into 
relation  with  another  set,  then  it  could  never  give  us  any- 
thing more  than  purely  hypothetical  knowledge  whose 
application  to  the  real  world  would  remain  forever  prob- 
lematic. It  would  mean  that  knowledge  is  impossible, 
a  result  which  seems  to  be  contradicted  by  the  existence 
of  knowledge.  The  logician  must,  therefore,  as  Bosan- 
quet  tells  us,  regard  it  as  an  essential  of  the  act  of  judg- 
ment that  it  always  refers  to  a  reality  which  goes  beyond 
and  is  independent  of  the  act  itself  (p.  104).  His  cen- 
tral problem  thus  becomes  that  of  understanding  what  the 
nature  of  reality  is  which  permits  of  being  denned  by 
ideas,  and  what  the  nature  of  an  idea  is  that  it  can  ever  be 
affirmed  to  be  real.  How  does  the  real  world  get  represen- 
tation in  experience,  and  what  is  the  guarantee  that  the 
representation,  when  obtained,  is  correct? 

The  defining  of  the  problem  suggests  the  view  of  the 
nature  of  reality  out  of  which  Bosanquet's  theory  of  the 
judgment  grows.  The  real  world  is  to  him  a  world  which 
has  its  existence  quite  independently  of  the  process  by 
which  it  is  known.  The  real  world  is  there  to  be  known, 
and  is  in  no  wise  modified  by  the  knowledge  which  we 
obtain  of  it.  The  work  of  thought  is  to  build  up  a  world  of 
ideas  which  shall  represent,  or  correspond  to,  the  world  of 
reality.  The  more  complete  and  perfect  the  correspondence, 
the  greater  our  store  of  knowledge. 

Translated  into  terms  of  the  judgment,  this  representa- 


88  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

tional  view  means  that  the  subject  of  the  judgment  must 
always  be  reality,  while  the  predicate  is  an  idea.  But  when 
we  examine  the  content  of  any  universal  judgment,  or  even  of 
an  ordinary  judgment  of  perception,  the  subject  which 
appears  in  the  judgment  is  evidently  not  reality  at  all,  if  by 
reality  we  mean  something  which  is  in  no  sense  constituted 
by  the  thought-process.  When  I  say,  "The  tree  is  green," 
the  subject,  tree,  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  bit  of  reality 
which  is  given  ready-made  to  the  thought-process.  The 
ability  to  perceive  a  tree,  to  distinguish  it  from  other 
objects  and  single  it  out  for  the  application  of  an  idea, 
evidently  implies  a  long  series  of  previous  judgments. 
The  content  "tree"  is  itself  ideal.  As  Bosanquet  forcibly 
states  it:  "If  a  sensation  or  elementary  perception  is  in 
consciousness  (and  if  not  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  it 
in  logic),  it  already  bears  the  form  of  thinking"  (p.  33). 
How,  then,  can  it  serve  as  the  subject  of  a  judgment? 
Bosanquet's  solution  of  the  problem  is  to  say  that  the  real 
subject  of  a  judgment  is  not  the  grammatical  subject  which 
appears  in  a  proposition,  but  reality  itself.  In  the  more 
complex  forms  of  judgment  the  reference  to  reality  is  dis- 
guised by  the  introduction  of  explicit  ideas  to  designate 
the  portion  of  reality  to  which  reference  is  made  (pp.  78, 
79).  In  the  simplest  type  of  judgment  known,  however,  the 
qualitative  judgment  of  perception,  the  reference  to  reality 
appears  within  the  judgment  itself.  The  relations  of  thought 
to  reality  and  of  the  elements  of  the  judgment  to  one 
another  can,  accordingly,  most  readily  be  seen  in  the  con- 
sideration of  this  rudimentary  form  of  judgment  in  which 
the  various  parts  lie  bare  before  us. 
Bosanquet  describes  it  as  follows: 

If  I  say,  pointing  to  a  particular  house,  "  That  is  my  home,"  it 
is  clear  that  in  this  act  of  judgment  the  reference  conveyed  by  the 
demonstrative  is  indispensable.  The  significant  idea  "  my  home  " 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT  89 

is  affirmed,  not  of  any  other  general  significant  idea  in  my  mind, 
but  of  something  which  is  rendered  unique  by  being  present  to  me 
in  perception  In  making  the  judgment,  "That  is  my  home,"  I 
extend  the  present  sense-perception  of  a  house  in  a  certain  land- 
scape by  attaching  to  it  the  ideal  content  or  meaning  of  "  home  ; " 
and  moreover,  in  doing  this,  I  pronounce  the  ideal  content  to  be, 
so  to  speak,  of  one  and  the  same  tissue  with  what  I  have  before 
me  in  my  actual  perception  That  is  to  say,  I  affirm  the  meaning 
of  the  idea,  or  the  idea  considered  as  a  meaning,  to  be  a  real  quality 
of  that  which  I  perceive  in  my  perception. 

The  same  account  holds  good  of  every  perceptive  judgment ; 
when  I  see  a  white  substance  on  a  plate  and  judge  that  "it  is 
bread "  I  affirm  the  reference,  or  general  meaning  which  consti- 
tutes the  symbolic  idea  "bread"  in  my  mind,  to  be  a  real  quality 
of  the  spot  or  point  in  present  perception  which  I  attempt  to  des- 
ignate by  the  demonstrative  "this."  The  act  defines  the  given 
but  indefinite  real  by  affirmation  of  a  quality,  and  affirms  reality  of 
the  definite  quality  by  attaching  it  to  the  previously  undefined 
real.  Reality  is  given  for  me  in  present  sensuous  perception,  and 
in  the  immediate  feeling  of  my  own  sentient  existence  that  goes 
with  it.  (Pp.  76,  77.) 

Again,  he  says  that  the  general  features  of  the  judgment 
of  perception  are  as  follows  : 

There  is  a  presence  of  a  something  in  contact  with  our  sensi- 
tive self,  which,  as  being  so  in  contact,  has  the  character  of  reality; 
and  there  is  the  qualification  of  this  reality  by  the  reference  to  it 
of  some  meaning  such  as  can  be  symbolized  by  a  name  (p.  77). 

Our  point  of  contact  with  reality,  the  place  where  reality 
gets  into  the  thought-process,  is,  according  to  this  view,  to 
be  found  in  the  simplest,  most  indefinite  type  of  judgment 
of  perception.  We  meet  with  reality  in  the  mere  unde- 
fined "  this "  of  primitive  experience.  But  each  such  ele- 
mentary judgment  about  an  undefined  "  this  "  is  an  isolated 
bit  of  experience.  Each  "  this  "  could  give  us  only  a  detached 
bit  of  reality  at  best,  and  the  further  problem  now  confronts 
us  of  how  we  ever  succeed  in  piecing  our  detached  bits  of 


90  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

reality  together  to  iorm  a  real  world.     Bosanquet's  explana- 
tion is,  in  his  words,  this: 

The  real  world,  as  a  definite  organized  system,  is  for  me  an 
extension  of  this  present  sensation  and  self-feeling  by  means  of 
judgment,  and  it  is  the  essence  of  judgment  to  effect  and  sustain 
such  an  extension  (p.  77). 

Again  he  says: 

The  subject  in  every  judgment  of  Perception  is  some  given  spot 
or  point  in  sensuous  contact  with  the  percipient  self.  But,  as  all 
reality  is  continuous,  the  subject  is  not  merely  this  given  spot  or 
point.  It  is  impossible  to  confine  the  real  world  within  this  or  that 
presentation.  Every  definition  or  qualification  of  a  point  in  pres- 
ent perception  is  affirmed  of  the  real  world  which  is  continuous 
with  present  perception.  The  ultimate  subject  of  the  perceptive 
judgment  is  the  real  world  as  a  whole,  and  it  is  of  this  that,  in 
judging,  we  affirm  the  qualities  or  characteristics.  (P.  78.) 

The  problem  is  the  same  as  that  with  which  Bradley 
struggles  in  his  treatment  of  the  subject  of  the  judgment, 
and  the  solution  is  also  the  same.  Bradley' s  treatment 
of  the  point  is  perhaps  somewhat  more  explicit.  Like 
Bosanquet,  he  starts  with  the  proposition  that  the  subject  of 
the  judgment  must  be  reality  itself  and  not  an  idea,  be- 
cause, if  it  were  the  latter,  judgment  could  never  give  us 
anything  but  a  union  of  ideas,  and  a  union  of  ideas  remains 
forever  universal  and  hypothetical.  It  can  never  acquire 
the  uniqueness,  the  singularity,  which  is  necessary  to  make 
it  refer  to  the  real.  Uniqueness  can  be  found  only  in  our 
contact  with  the  real.  But  just  where  does  our  contact 
with  the  real  occur?  Bradley  recognizes  the  fact  that  it 
cannot  be  the  content — even  in  the  case  of  a  simple  sensa- 
tion— which  gives  us  reality.  The  content  of  a  sensation  is  a 
thing  which  is  in  my  consciousness,  and  which  has  the  form 
which  it  presents  because  it  is  in  my  consciousness.  Reality 
is  precisely  something  which  is  not  itself  sensation,  and  can- 
not be  in  my  consciousness.  If  I  say,  "This  is  white,"  the 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT  91 

"this"  has  a  content  which  is  a  sensation  of  whiteness. 
But  the  sensation  of  whiteness  is  not  reality.  The  experi- 
ence brings  with  it  an  assurance  of  reality,  not  because  its 
content  is  the  real,  but  because  it  is  "  my  direct  encounter 
in  sensible  presentation  with  the  real  world."1  To  make 
the  matter  clearer,  Bradley  draws  a  distinction  between  the 
this  and  the  thisness.  In  every  experience,  however  simple, 
there  is  a  content  —  a  "thisness" — which  is  not  itself 
unique.  Considered  merely  as  content,  it  is  applicable  to  an 
indefinite  number  of  existences;  in  other  words,  it  is  an 
idea.  But  there  is  also  in  every  experience  a  "this"  which 
is  unique,  but  which  is  not  a  content.  It  is  a  mere  sign  of 
existence  which  gives  the  experience  uniqueness,  but  nothing 
else.  The  "thisness"  falls  on  the  side  of  the  content,  and 
the  "this"  on  the  side  of  existence.  It  is  exactly  the  dis- 
tinction which  Bosanquet  has  in  mind  in  the  passages  quoted 
in  which  he  tells  us  that  "reality  is  given  for  me  in  present 
sensuous  perception,  and  in  the  immediate  feeling  of  my 
own  sentient  existence  which  goes  with  it;"  and  again  when 
he  says:  "  There  is  a  presence  of  a  something  in  contact 
with  our  sensitive  self,  which,  as  being  so  in  contact,  has  the 
character  of  reality."  The  same  point  is  made  somewhat 
more  explicitly  in  his  introduction  when  he  says  that  the 
individual's  present  perception  is  not,  indeed,  reality  as 
such,  but  is  his  present  point  of  contact  with  reality  as 
such  (p.  3). 

But  has  this  distinction  between  the  content  of  an  ex- 
perience and  its  existence  solved  the  problem  of  how  we 
know  reality  ?  When  Bosanquet  talks  of  knowing  reality, 
he  means  possessing  ideas  which  are  an  accurate  reproduc- 
tion of  reality.  It  is  still  far  from  clear  how,  according  to 
his  own  account,  we  could  ever  have  any  assurance  that  our 
ideas  do  represent  reality  accurately,  if  we  can  nowhere  find 

i  F.  H.  BKADLEY,  Principles  of  Logic,  p.  64. 


92  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

a  point  at  which  the  content  of  an  experience  can  be  held  to 
give  us  reality.  The  case  is  still  worse  when  we  go  beyond 
the  problem  of  how  any  particular  bit  of  reality  can  be 
known,  and  ask  ourselves  how  reality  as  a  whole  can  be 
known.  The  explanation  offered  by  both  Bradley  and 
Bosanquet  is  that  by  means  of  judgment  we  extend  the  bit 
of  reality  of  whose  existence  we  get  a  glimpse  through  a 
peep-hole  in  the  curtain  of  sensuous  perception,  and  thus 
build  up  the  organized  system  of  reality.  In  a  passage  pre- 
viously quoted,  Bosanquet  tells  us  that  all  reality  is  continu- 
ous, and  therefore  the  real  subject  of  a  judgment  cannot  be 
the  mere  spot  or  point  which  is  given  in  sensuous  percep- 
tion, but  must  be  the  real  world  as  a  whole.  But  how  does 
he  know  that  reality  is  continuous,  and  that  the  real  world  is 
an  organized  system  ?  Our  only  knowledge  of  reality  comes 
through  judgment,  and  judgment  brings  us  into  contact  with 
reality  only  at  isolated  points.  When  he  tells  us  that  reality 
is  a  continuous  whole,  he  does  so  on  the  basis  of  a  meta- 
physical presupposition  which  is  not  justifiable  by  his  theory 
of  the  judgment.  The  only  statement  about  reality  which 
could  be  maintained  on  the  basis  of  his  theory  is  that  some 
sort  of  a  reality  exists,  but  the  theory  furnishes  equal  justifi- 
cation for  the  assurance  that  this  reality  is  of  such  a  nature 
that  we  can  never  know  anything  more  about  it  than  the 
bare  fact  of  its  existence.  Moreover,  the  bare  fact  of  the  exist- 
ence of  reality  comes  to  us  merely  in  the  form  of  a  feeling  of 
our  own  sentient  existence  which  goes  with  sense-perception. 
But  the  mere  assurance  that  somewhere  behind  the  curtain 
of  sensuous  perception  reality  exists  (even  if  this  could  go 
unchallenged),  accompanied  by  the  certainty  that  we  can  never 
by  any  possibility  know  anything  more  about  it,  is  practi- 
cally equivalent  to  the  denial  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge.1 

i  The  difficulty,  of  course,  is  not  a  merely  formal  one,  much  less  a  verbal  one. 
Instinctively  we  grant  to  Bosanquet  his  statement  that  reality  is  a  continuous 
whole;  we  feel  it  almost  captious  to  question  his  right  to  it.  But  why?  Because 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT  93 

Although  the  denial  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge  seems 
to  be  the  logical  outcome  of  the  premises,  it  is  not  the  con- 
clusion reached  by  Bosanquet.  At  the  outset  of  his  treatise, 
Bosanquet  propounds  the  fundamental  question  we  have 
been  considering  in  these  words:  "How  does  the  analysis 
of  knowledge  as  a  systematic  function,  or  system  of  func- 
tions, explain  that  relationship  in  which  truth  appears  to 
consist,  between  the  human  intelligence  on  the  one  hand, 
and  fact  or  reality  on  the  other?"  His  answer  is:  "To  this 
difficulty  there  is  only  one  reply.  If  the  object-matter  of 
reality  lay  genuinely  outside  the  system  of  thought,  not  only 
our  analysis,  but  thought  itself,  would  be  unable  to  lay  hold  of 
reality."  (Pp.  2,  3.)  The  statement  is  an  explicit  recognition 
of  the  impossibility  of  bridging  the  chasm  between  a  reality 
outside  the  content  of  knowledge  and  a  known  real  world. 
It  brings  before  us  the  dilemma  contained  in  Bosanquet's 
treatment  of  the  subject  of  the  judgment.  On  the  one  hand 
the  subject  of  the  judgment  must  be  outside  the  realm  of  my 
thoughts.  If  it  were  not,  judgment  would  merely  establish 
a  relation  between  my  ideas  and  would  give  me  no  knowledge 
of  the  real  world.  On  the  other  hand,  the  subject  of  the 
judgment  must  be  within  the  realm  of  my  thoughts.  If  it 
were  not,  I  could  never  assert  anything  of  it ;  could  never 
judge,  or  know  it.  The  stress  he  lays  on  the  first  horn  of 
the  dilemma  has  been  shown.  It  remains  to  show  his  recog- 
nition of  the  second  horn,  and  to  find  out  whether  or  not  he 
discovers  any  real  reconciliation  between  the  two. 

Bosanquet  sums  up  the  section  of  the  introduction  on 
knowledge  and  its  content,  truth,  with  the  following  para- 
graph; 

the  content  of  judgment  is  continuous;  judgment  is  always  engaged  with  the  deter- 
mination  of  a  related  totality.  But  if  all  content- is  ideal,  and  judgment  is  just  the 
application  of  this  content  to  reality  in  virtue  of  an  isolated  contact,  surely  it  begs 
the  entire  question  to  say  that  reality  apart  from  the  content  applied  is  continuous, 
and  then  to  use  this  assertion  to  justify  the  objective  validity  of  the  judgment— its 
element  of  permanent  truth. 


94  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

The  real  world  for  every  individual  is  thus  emphatically  his 
world;  an  extension  and  determination  of  his  present  perception, 
which  perception  is  to  him  not  indeed  reality  as  such,  but  his  point 
of  contact  with  reality  as  such.  Thus  in  the  enquiry  which  will 
have  to  be  undertaken  as  to  the  logical  subject  of  the  judgment,  we 
shall  find  that  the  subject,  however  it  may  shift,  contract,  and 
expand,  is  always  in  the  last  resort  some  greater  or  smaller  element 
of  this  determinate  reality,  which  the  individual  has  constructed  by 
identifying  significant  ideas  with  that  world  of  which  he  has  assur- 
ance through  his  own  perceptive  experience.  In  analyzing  common 
judgment  it  is  ultimately  one  to  say  that  I  judge  and  that  the  real 
world  for  me,  my  real  world,  extends  itself,  or  maintains  its  organ- 
ized extension.  This  is  the  ultimate  connection  by  which  the  dis- 
tinction of  subject  and  predication  is 'involved  in  the  act  of  affirma- 
tion or  enunciation  which  is  the  differentia  of  judgment.  (Pp.  3, 4). 

Here  the  subject  of  the  judgment  appears  as  an  element 
of  a  reality  which  the  individual  has  constructed  by  identify- 
ing significant  ideas  with  that  world  of  which  he  has  assur- 
ance through  his  own  perceptive  experience.  But  the  very 
point  with  reference  to  the  subject  of  the  judgment  pre- 
viously emphasized  is  that  it  is  not  and  cannot  be  something 
which  the  individual  has  constructed.  The  subject  of  the 
judgment  must  be  reality,  and  reality  does  not  consist  of 
ideas,  even  if  it  be  determined  by  them.  It  does  not  mend 
matters  to  explain  that  the  individual  has  constructed  his 
real  world  by  identifying  significant  ideas  with  that  world  of 
which  he  has  assurance  through  his  own  perceptive  experi- 
ences, because,  as  we  have  seen,  "  the  individual's  perceptive 
experiences"  either  turn  out  to  be  merely  similar  mental 
constructions  made  at  a  prior  time,  so  that  nothing  is  gained 
by  attaching  to  them,  or  else  they  mean  once  more  the  mere 
shock  of  contact  which  is  supposed  to  give  assurance  that  some 
sort  of  reality  exists,  but  which  gives  no  assurance  of  what 
it  is.  That  and  what,  this  and  thisness  still  remain  detached. 
When  he  talks  of  the  real  world  for  any  individual  we  are 
left  entirely  in  the  dark  as  to  what  the  relation  between  the 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT  95 

real  world  as  it  is  for  any  individual  and  the  real  world  as 
it  is  for  itself  may  be,  or  how  the  individual  is  to  gain  any 
assurance  that  the  real  world  as  it  is  for  him  represents  the 
real  world  as  it  is  for  itself. 

Another  attempt  at  a  reconciliation  of  these  opposing  views 
leaves  us  no  better  satisfied.  The  passage  is  as  follows: 

The  real  world,  as  a  definite  organized  system,  is  for  me  an 
extension  of  this  present  sensation  and  self -feeling  by  means  of 
judgment,  and  it  is  the  essence  of  judgment  to  effect  and  sustain 
such  an  extension.  It  makes  no  essential  difference  whether  the 
ideas  whose  content  is  pronounced  to  be  an  attribute  of  reality 
appear  to  fall  within  what  is  given  in  perception,  or  not.  We  shall 
find  hereafter  that  it  is  vain  to  attempt  to  lay  down  boundaries 
between  the  given  and  its  extension.  The  moment  we  try  to  do 
this  we  are  on  the  wrong  track.  The  given  and  its  extension  differ 
not  absolutely  but  relatively;  they  are  continuous  with  each  other, 
and  the  metaphor  by  which  we  speak  of  an  extension  conceals  from 
us  that  the  so-called  "given"  is  no  less  artificial  than  that  by 
which  it  is  extended.  It  is  the  character  and  quality  of  being 
directly  in  contact  with  sense-perception,  not  any  fixed  datum  of 
content,  that  forms  the  constantly  shifting  center  of  the  individual's 
real  world,  and  spreads  from  that  center  over  every  extension  which 
the  system  of  reality  receives  from  judgment.  (P.  77.) 

In  this  passage  by  the  "given"  he  evidently  means  the 
content  of  sensory  experience,  the  thisness,  the  what.  It  is, 
as  he  says,  of  the  same  stuff  as  that  by  which  it  is  extended. 
Both  the  given  and  that  by  which  it  is  extended  are  artificial 
in  the  sense  of  not  being  real  according  to  Bosanquet's 
interpretation  of  reality ;  they  are  ideas.  But  if  all  this  is 
admitted,  what  becomes  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge? 
Bosanquet  undertakes  to  rescue  it  by  assuring  us  again  that 
it  is  the  character  and  quality  of  being  directly  in  contact 
with  sense-perception,  not  any  fixed  datum  of  content,  that 
forms  the  center  of  the  individual's  real  world  and  gives  the 
stamp  of  reality  to  his  otherwise  ideal  extension  of  this 
center.  Here  again  we  find  ourselves  with  no  evidence 


96  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

that  the  content  of  our  knowledge  bears  any  relation  to 
reality.  We  have  merely  the  feeling  of  vividness  attached 
to  sensory  experience  which  seems  to  bring  us  the  certainty 
that  there  is  some  sort  of  a  reality  behind  it,  but  this  is 
not  to  give  assurance  that  our  ideal  content  even  belongs 
rightfully  to  that  against  which  we  have  bumped,  much 
less  of  how  it  belongs — and  only  this  deserves  the  title 
"  knowledge." 

In  the  chapter  on  "Quality  and  Comparison,"  in  which 
he  takes  up  the  more  detailed  treatment  of  the  simplest 
types  of  judgment  of  perception,  he  comes  back  to  the  same 
contradiction,  and  again  attempts  to  explain  how  both  horns 
of  his  dilemma  must  be  true.  The  passage  is  this  : 

The  Reality  to  which  we  ascribe  the  predicate  is  undoubtedly 
self -existent ;  it  is  not  merely  in  my  mind  or  in  my  act  of  judg- 
ment ;  if  it  were,  the  judgment  would  only  be  a  game  with  my 
ideas.  It  is  well  to  make  this  clear  in  the  case  before  us,  for  in  the 
later  forms  of  the  judgment  it  will  be  much  disguised.  Still  the 
reality  which  attracts  my  concentrated  attention  is  also  within  my 
act  of  judgment ;  it  is  not  even  the  whole  reality  present  to  my 
perception;  still  less  of  course  the  whole  self -existent  Reality 
which  I  dimly  presuppose.  The  immediate  subject  of  the  judg- 
ment is  a  mere  aspect,  too  indefinite  to  be  described  by  explicit 
ideas  except  in  as  far  as  the  qualitative  predication  imposes  a  first 
specification,  upon  it.  This  Reality  is  in  my  judgment ;  it  is  the 
point  at  which  the  actual  world  impinges  upon  my  consciousness 
as  real,  and  it  is  dnly  by  judging  with  reference  to  this  point  that  I 
can  refer  the  ideal  content  before  my  mind  to  the  whole  of  reality 
which  I  at  once  believe  to  exist,  and  am  attempting  to  construct. 
The  Subject  is  both  in  and  out  of  the  Judgment,  as  Reality  is  both 
in  and  out  of  my  consciousness.  (Pp.  113, 114.) 

The  conclusion  he  reaches  is  a  mere  restatement  of  the 
difficulty.  The  problem  he  is  trying  to  solve  is  how  the 
subject  can  be  both  in  and  out  of  the  judgment,  and  how 
the  subject  without  is  related  to  the  subject  within.  The 
mere  assertion  that  it  is  so  does  not  help  us  to  understand  it. 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT  97 

His  procedure  seems  like  taking  advantage  of  two  mean- 
ings of  sense-perception,  its  conscious  quality  and  its  brute 
abrupt  immediacy,  and  then  utilizing  this  ambiguity  to  solve 
a  problem  which  grows  out  of  the  conception  of  judgment 
as  a  reference  of  idea  to  reality. 

Turning  from  his  treatment  of  the  world  of  fact  to  his 
discussion  of  the  world  of  idea,  from  the  subject  to  the 
predicate,  as  it  appears  in  his  theory  of  the  judgment  we 
find  again  a  paradox  which  must  be  recognized  and  cannot 
be  obviated.  An  idea  is  essentially  a  meaning.  It  is  not 
a  particular  existence  whose  essence  is  uniqueness  as  is  the 
case  with  the  subject  of  the  judgment,  but  is  a  meaning 
whose  importance  is  that  it  may  apply  to  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  unique  existences.  Its  characteristic  is  universality. 
And  yet  an  idea  regarded  as  a  psychical  existence,  an  idea 
as  a  content  in  my  mind,  is  just  as  particular  and  unique  as 
any  other  existence.  How,  then,  does  it  obtain  its  charac- 
teristic of  universality  ?  Bosanquet's  answer  is  that  it  must 
be  universal  by  means  of  a  reference  to  something  other 
than  itself.  Its  meaning  resides,  not  in  its  existence  as  a 
psychical  image,  but  in  its  reference  to  something  beyond 
itself.  Now,  any  idea  that  is  affirmed  is  referred  to  reality, 
but  do  ideas  exist  which  are  not  being  affirmed  ?  If  so, 
their  reference  cannot  be  to  reality.  Bosanquet  discusses 
the  question  in  the  second  section  of  his  introduction  as  fol- 
lows : 

It  is  not  easy  to  deny  that  there  is  a  world  of  ideas  or  of  mean- 
ings, which  simply  consists  in  that  identical  reference  of  symbols 
by  which  mutual  understanding  between  rational  beings  is  made 
possible.  A  mere  suggestion,  a  mere  question,  a  mere  negation, 
seem  all  of  them  to  imply  that  we  sometimes  entertain  ideas  with- 
out affirming  them  of  reality,  and  therefore  without  affirming  their 
reference  to  be  a  reference  to  something  real  or  their  meaning  to 
be  fact.  We  may  be  puzzled  indeed  to  say  what  an  idea  can 
mean,  or  to  what  it  can  refer,  if  it  does  not  mean  or  refer  to  some- 


98  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

thing  real — to  some  element  in  the  fabric  continuously  sustained 
by  the  judgment  which  is  our  consciousness.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  would  be  shirking  a  difficulty  to  neglect  the  consideration  that 
an  idea,  while  denied  of  reality,  may  nevertheless,  or  even  must, 
possess  an  identical  and  so  intelligible  reference — a  symbolic 
value — for  the  rational  beings  who  deny  it.  A  reference,  it  may 
be  argued,  must  be  a  reference  to  something.  But  it  seems  as 
if  in  this  case  the  something  were  the  fact  of  reference  itself, 
the  rational  convention  between  intelligent  beings,  or  rather  the 
world  which  has  existence,  whether  for  one  rational  being  or  for 
many,  merely  as  contained  in  and  sustained  by  such  intellectual 
reference. 

I  pnly  adduce  these  considerations  in  order  to  explain  that 
transitional  conception  of  an  objective  world  or  world  of  meanings, 
distinct  from  the  real  world  or  world  of  facts,  with  which  it  is 
impossible  wholly  to  dispense  in  an  account  of  thought  starting 
from  the  individual  subject.  The  paradox  is  that  the  real  world 
or  world  of  fact  thus  seems  for  us  to  fall  within  and  be  included 
in  the  objective  world  or  world  of  meanings,  as  if  all  that  is  fact 
were  meaning,  but  not  every  meaning  were  fact.  This  results  in 
the  contradiction  that  something  is  objective,  which  is  not  real. 
(Pp.  4,  5.) 

In  the  seventh  section  of  the  introduction  Bosanquet 
explains  his  meaning  further  by  what  the  reader  is  privi- 
leged to  regard  as  a  flight  of  the  imagination  —  a  mere 
simile  —  which  he  thinks  may,  nevertheless,  make  the  matter 
clearer. 

We  might  try  to  think  that  the  world,  as  known  to  each  of  us, 
is  constructed  and  sustained  by  his  individual  consciousness ;  and 
that  every  other  individual  also  frames  for  himself,  and  sustains  by 
the  action  of  his  intelligence,  the  world  in  which  he  in  particular 
lives  and  moves.  Of  course  such  a  construction  is  to  be  taken  as  a 
reconstruction,  a  construction  by  way  of  knowledge  only  ;  but  for 
our  present  purpose  this  is  indifferent.  Thus  we  might  think  of 
the  ideas  and  objects  of  our  private  world  rather  as  corresponding  to 
than  as  from  the  beginning  identical  with  those  which  our  fellow- 
men  are  occupied  in  constructing  each  within  his  own  sphere  of 
consciousness.  And  the  same  would  be  true  even  of  the  objects  and 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT  99 

contents  within  our  own  world,  in  as  far  as  an  act  or  effort  would 
be  required  to  maintain  them,  of  the  same  kind  with  that  which 

was  originally  required  to  construct  them Thus  the  paradox 

of  reference  would  become  clearer.  We  should  understand  that  we 
refer  to  a  correspondence  by  means  of  a  content.  We  should  soften 
down  the  contradiction  of  saying  that  a  name  to  meet  which  we  have 
and  can  get  nothing  but  an  idea,  nevertheless  does  not  stand  for  that 
idea  but  for  something  else.  We  should  be  able  to  say  that  the 
name  stands  for  those  elements  in  the  idea  which  correspond  in  all 
our  separate  worlds,  and  in  our  own  world  of  yesterday  and  of 
today,  considered  as  so  corresponding.  (Pp.  45,  46.) 

According  to  this  view,  the  idea  obtains  the  universality 
which  constitutes  it  an  idea  by  a  sort  of  process  of  elimina- 
tion. It  is  like  a  composite  photograph.  It  selects  only 
the  common  elements  in  a  large  number  of  particular  exist- 
ences, and  thus  succeeds  in  representing,  or  referring  to,  all 
the  particular  existences  which  have  gone  to  make  it  up. 
But  when  we  come  to  consider  the  bearing  which  this  view 
of  universality,  or  generalized  significance,  has  on  our  esti- 
mate of  the  knowledge-process,  we  feel  that  it  has  not  solved 
the  problem  for  us.  In  the  first  place,  the  idea  in  its  exist- 
ence is  just  as  particular  when  regarded  as  made  up  of  the 
common  elements  of  many  ideas  as  is  any  of  the  ideas  whose 
elements  are  taken.  A  composite  photograph  is  just  as 
much  a  single  photograph  as  any  one  of  the  photographs 
which  are  taken  to  compose  it.  The  chasm  between  the 
particularity  of  the  psychical  image  and  the  universality 
of  its  meaning  is  not  bridged  by  regarding  the  content 
of  the  image  as  made  up  by  eliminating  unlike  elements 
in  a  number  of  images.  The  stuff  with  which  thought  has 
to  work  is  still  nothing  more  than  a  particular  psychical 
image,  and  the  problem  of  what  gives  it  its  logical  value 
as  a  general  significance  is  still  unsolved.  Nor  does  it 
seem  possible  to  find  anything  in  the  existence  of  the  image 
which  could  account  for  its  reference  to  something  outside 


100  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

of  itself.     The  fact  of  reference  itself  becomes  an  ultimate 
mystery.1 

But  even  waiving  this  difficulty,  the  judgment  must  still 
appear  truncated,  if  it  really  totally  disregard  a  part  of  its 
content — i.  e.t  the  particular  existence  of  the  image  as  part 
of  the  judging  consciousness.  The  theory  holds  that  the 
particular  existence  of  the  image  has  no  logical  value.  It 
is  only  its  meaning,  or  general  reference,  which  has  logi- 
cal value.  But  the  image  qua  image  is  just  as  real  as  that 
to  which  it  is  supposed  to  refer.  If  the  judgment  really 
does  ignore  its  existence,  then  it  ignores  a  portion  of  the 
reality  it  attempts  to  represent,  and  stands  self-confessed 
as  a  f  ailure.a  At  still  another  point,  ideas,  as  Bosanquet  rep- 
resents them,  prove  to  be  unsatisfactory  tools  to  use  in  the 
work  of  building  up  reality.  In  Bosanquet' s  words:  "The 
meaning  tyrannizes  over  the  psychical  image  in  another 
respect.  Besides  crushing  out  of  sight  its  particular  and 
exclusive  existence,  it  also  crushes  out  part  of  its  content" 
(p.  74).  The  idea,  as  we  use  it,  is  not,  as  to  content,  a 
complete  or  accurate  representation  of  anything  real.  To 
take  Bosanquet' s  illustration : 

Some  one  speaks  to  me  of  the  JSgean  sea,  which  I  have  never 
seen.  He  tells  me  that  it  is  a  deep  blue  sea  under  a  cloudless  sky, 
studded  with  rocky  islands.  The  meanings  of  these  words  are  a 
problem  set  to  my  thought.  I  have  to  meet  him  in  the  world  of 
objective  references,  which  as  intelligent  beings  we  have  in  com- 
mon. How  I  do  this  is  my  own  affair,  and  the  precise  images  at 
my  command  will  vary  from  day  to  day,  and  from  minute  to  min- 
ute. It  sounds  simple  to  say  that  I  combine  my  recollections  of 
sea  and  sky  at  Torbay  with  those  of  the  island-studded  waters  of 

1  There  is  good  reason  for  believing  that  Mr.  Bosanquet  escapes,  in  his  own 
mind,"  the  difficulty  by  the  term  "  correspondence."    "  The  name  stands  for  these  ele- 
ments in  the  idea  which  correspond  in  the  separate  worlds ; "  we  may  even  be  accused 
of  injustice  in  confusing  this  correspondence  with  bare  identity  of  existence.     But  if 
one  idea  corresponds  to  another  in  the  sense  of  referring  to  it,  what  is  this  but  the 
fact  to  be  explained — how  an  existence  can  refer  beyond  itself? 

2  This  conclusion  is  clearly  recognized  by  BRADLEY,  Appearance  and  Reality, 
chap.  4. 


BOSANQUET'S  THEOEY  OF  JUDGMENT          101 

Orkney  or  the  Hebrides.  Even  so,  there  is  much  to  adjust  and 
to  neglect ;  the  red  cliffs  of  Torbay,  and  the  cloudy  skies  of  the 
north.  But  then  again,  my  recollections  are  already  themselves 
symbolic  ideas ;  the  reference  to  Torbay  or  the  Hebrides  is  itself 
a  problem  set  to  thought,  and  puts  me  upon  the  selection  of  index- 
elements  in  fugitive  images  that  are  never  twice  the  same.  I  have 
first  to  symbolize  the  color  of  Torbay,  using  for  the  purpose  any 
blue  that  I  can  call  to  mind,  and  fixing,  correcting,  subtracting 
from,  the  color  so  recalled,  till  I  reduce  it  to  a  mere  index  quality; 
and  then  I  have  to  deal  in  the  same  way  with  the  meaning  or  sig- 
nificant idea  so  obtained,  clipping  and  adjusting  the  qualities  of 
Torbay  till  it  seems  to  serve  as  a  symbol  of  the  JEgean.  (Pp.  74, 75.) 

And  by  the  time  all  this  is  performed  what  sort  of  a  rep- 
resentation of  reality  is  the  idea  ?  Evidently  a  very  poor  and 
meager  and  fragmentary  one.  i  *  ^'v  "  V 

It  is  so  poor  and  fragmentary,  that  it  tjarmpt  itself  be 
that  which  is  affirmed  of  reality.  It  must  be  ^oirie 'otbier' 
fuller  existence  to  be  found  in  the  world  of  meanings  which 
is  affirmed.  And  yet  how  the  meager  content  of  the  idea 
succeeds  in  referring  to  the  world  of  meanings,  and  acting 
as  the  instrument  for  referring  a  meaning  to  reality,  is  not 
at  all  clear.  It  seems  impossible  to  explain  reference  intel- 
ligibly by  the  concept  of  a  correspondence  of  contents. 

The  fundamental  difficulty  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
predicate  is  the  same  one  that  we  encountered  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  subject.  If  the  predicate  is  to  be  affirmed 
of  reality  (and  if  it  be  not,  it  has  no  logical  value),  then  it 
must,  when  affirmed,  be  in  some  sense  an  accurate  represen- 
tation of  reality.  But  the  predicate  is  an  idea,  and,  more- 
over, an  idea  which  is,  both  in  its  existence  and  in  its  mean- 
ing palpably  the  outcome  of  transformations  wrought  upon 
given  sensory  contents  by  the  individual  consciousness.  Since 
the  one  point  of  contact  with  reality  is  in  sensory  experience, 
the  more  simple  sensory  experiences  are  reacted  upon  and 
worked  over,  the  farther  they  recede  from  reality.  The  idea 


102  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

seems,  therefore,  in  its  very  essence,  a  thing  which  never 
can  be  affirmed  of  reality.  As  image  it  is  itself  a  reality, 
but  not  affirmed;  as  meaning  it  is  that  reality  (the  image) 
manipulated  for  individual  ends.  Why  suppose  that  by  dis- 
torting reality  we  get  it  in  shape  to  affirm  of  reality  ?  More- 
over, the  farther  an  idea  is  removed  from  immediate  sen- 
sory experience  —  in  other  words,  the  more  abstract  it 
becomes  —  the  less  is  the  possibility  of  affirming  it  of  reality. 
The  final  outcome  of  this  point  of  view,  if  we  adhere  rigor- 
ously to  its  logic  is  that  the  more  thinking  we  do,  the  less  we 
know  about  the  real  world.  Bosanquet  avoids  this  conclu- 
sion by  a  pure  act  of  faith.  If  knowledge  is  to  be  rescued, 
we  must  believe  that  the  work  done  by  consciousness  upon 
the^bits^f  Teaxity  given  in  sensory  experience  really  does 
succeed  in  building  up  a  knowledge  of  reality  for  us.  As 
"Bocan'quot-puts  if  :  "The  presentation  of  Reality,  qualified 
by  an  ideal  content,  is  one  aspect  of  Subject  and  Predication; 
and  my  individual  percipient  consciousness  determining 
itself  by  a  symbolic  idea  is  the  other.  That  the  latter  is 
identified  with  the  former  follows  from  the  claim  of  con- 
scious thought  that  its  nature  is  to  know."1  (P.  83.) 

To  sum  up  the  situation,  Bosanquet  starts  out  with  the 
assumption  that  by  knowledge  we  must  mean  knowledge  of  a 
world  entirely  independent  of  our  ideas.  If  we  fail  to  make 
this  assumption,  knowledge  becomes  merely  a  relation  between 
ideas.  But  its  whole  importance  seems  to  us  to  rest  on 
the  conviction  that  it  does  give  us  knowledge  of  a  world 
which  is  what  it  is  quite  independently  of  our  ideas  about  it, 
and  cannot  in  any  sense  be  modified  by  what  we  think  about 
it.  What  knowledge  does  is  to  give  us  a  copy  or  represen- 
tation of  the  real  world,  whose  value  depends  on  the  accuracy 

1  It  would  be  suggestive  to  inquire  in  what  sense  conscious  thought  claims  to 
know.  Is  it  a  general  claim  which  thought  qua  thought  puts  forth,  or  is  it  the  claim 
of  the  content  of  some  particular  thought?  The  former,  of  course,  is  a  mere  pious 
aspiration  having  no  reference  to  specific  validity  or  truth ;  the  latter  is  precisely  the 
problem  under  consideration. 


BOSANQUET'S  THEOKY  OF  JUDGMENT          103 

of  the  representation.  And  yet  when  we  examine  any  indi- 
vidual knowing  consciousness,  the  subject  which  appears 
within  the  judgment  is  never  some  portion  of  the  world 
which  exists  outside  of  the  knowing  consciousness,  but  always 
some  portion  of  the  world  which  exists  within  the  knowing 
consciousness,  and  which  is  constituted  by  the  knowledge 
process.  The  predicate  which  is  affirmed  of  reality  is  con- 
stantly found  to  derive  its  meaning,  its  generalized  signifi- 
cance, not  from  its  correspondence  with,  or  reference  to,  the 
real  world  outside  of  the  knowing  consciousness,  but  from 
reference  to  a  world  of  meanings,  which  consists  in  a  sort  of 
convention  among  rational  beings — a  world  whose  existence 
is  distinctly  within  the  knowing  consciousness  and  not  out- 
side of  it.1  Between  the  real  world,  as  Bosanquet  conceives 
it,  and  the  world  of  knowledge,  we  find  inserted  on  the  side 
of  the  subject,  the  world  as  known  to  each  of  us,  and  on  the 
side  of  the  predicate,  the  objective  world  of  meanings. 
Neither  of  these  is  the  real  world.  Both  of  them  are  ideal,  i.  e. , 
are  constructions  of  the  individual  consciousness.  We  nowhere 
find  any  satisfactory  explanation  of  how  these  ideal  worlds 
are  related  to  the  real  world.  There  is  merely  the  assertion 
that  we  must  believe  that  they  represent  the  real  world  in 
order  that  we  may  believe  that  knowledge  exists.  But  the 
fact  remains  that  whenever  we  try  to  analyze  and  explain 
any  particular  judgment,  what  we  find  ourselves  dealing  with 
is  always  the  world  as  it  exists  to  us  as  subject,  and  the 
objective  world  of  meanings  as  predicate.  If  we  stop  here, 
then  knowledge  turns  out  to  be  just  what  Bosanquet  asserted 
at  the  outset  that  it  was  not,  i.  e.,  a  relation  between  ideas. 
When  we  demand  a  justification  for  going  farther  than 
this,  we  find  none  except  the  claim  of  conscious  thought 
that  its  nature  is  to  know — a  claim  whose  justice  we  have 

i  Bosanquet  would  seem  to  have  followed  Lotze  in  this  insertion  of  a  world  of 
"  meanings  "  intermediate  between  the  individual  idea  as  such  and  the  real  object 
as  such.  See  the  criticism  already  passed,  pp.  93-5. 


104  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

no  possible  means  of  testing,  and  which  would  not,  even  if 
admitted,  be  of  the  slightest  value  in  deciding  which  par- 
ticular judgment  is  true  and  which  false. 

Bosanquet's  development  of  his  subject  has  proved  to  be 
throughout  the  necessary  logical  outcome  of  the  presuppo- 
sitions with  reference  to  reality  from  which  he  starts.  The 
fundamental  difficulty  of  erecting  a  theory  of  the  knowledge- 
process  upon  such  a  basis  is  recognized  by  him  at  the  start 
in  a  passage  already  quoted:  "If  the  object-matter  of  reality 
lay  genuinely  outside  the  system  of  thought,  not  only  our 
analysis,  but  thought  itself,  would  be  unable  to  lay  hold  of 
reality"  (p.  2).  But,  in  spite  of  this  assertion,  his  funda- 
mental conception  of  reality  remains  that  of  a  system  which 
does  lie  outside  the  thought-process.  His  theory  is  an 
attempt  to  reconcile  the  essentially  irreconcilable  views  that 
reality  is  outside  of  the  thought-process,  and  that  it  is  inside 
of  the  thought-process,  and  he  succeeds  only  by  calling  upon 
our  faith  that  so  it  is. 

If  it  be  true,  as  it  seems  to  him  to  be,  that  we  are  com- 
pelled to  adhere  to  both  of  these  views  of  reality,  then  surely 
there  is  no  other  outcome.  It  means,  however,  that  we  finally 
resign  all  hope  of  'knowing  reality.  We  may  have  faith  in 
its  existence,  but  we  have  no  way  of  deciding  what  particu- 
lar judgment  has  reality  in  it  as  it  should  have  it,  and  what 
as  it  should  not.  All  stand  (and  fall)  on  the  same  basis. 
But  does  not  Bosanquet  himself  point  out  a  pathway  which, 
if  followed  farther,  would  reach  a  more  satisfactory  view  of 
the  realm  of  knowledge?  He  has  shown  us  that  the  only 
sort  of  reality  we  know,  or  can  know,  is  the  reality  which 
appears  within  our  judgment-process — the  reality  as  known 
to  us.  Would  it  not  be  possible  to  drop  the  presupposed 
reality  outside  of  the  judgment-process  (with  which  judg- 
ment is  endeavoring  to  make  connections)  and  content  our- 
selves with  the  sort  of  reality  which  appears  within  the 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          105 

judgment-process?  In  other  words,  may  there  not  be  a 
satisfactory  view  of  reality  which  frankly  recognizes  its 
organic  relation  to  the  knowledge-process,  without  at  the 
same  time  destroying  its  value  as  reality?  Is  it  possible  to 
admit  that  reality  is  in  a  sense  constituted  in  the  judgment 
without  making  it  at  the  same  time  the  figment  of  the  indi- 
vidual imagination — "a  game  with  ideas"? 

Let  us  assume  for  the  moment  that  the  real  difficulty 
with  Mr.  Bosanquet's  conception,  the  error  that  keeps  him 
traveling  in  his  hopeless  circles,  is  the  notion  that  truth  is  a 
matter  of  reference  of  ideas  as  such  to  reality  as  such,  lead- 
ing us  to  oscillate  between  the  alternatives  that  either  all 
ideas  have  such  reference,  and  so  are  true,  constitute  knowl- 
edge; or  else  none  have  such  reference,  and  so  are  false;  or 
else  are  mere  ideas  to  which  neither  truth  nor  falsity  can  be 
attributed.  Let  us  ask  if  truth  is  not  rather  some  specific 
relation  within  experience,  something  which  characterizes 
one  idea  rather  than  another,  so  that  our  problem  is  not  how 
an  idea  can  refer  to  a  reality  beyond  itself,  but  what  are  the 
marks  by  which  we  discriminate  a  true  reference  from  a 
false  one.  Then  let  us  ask  for  the  criterion  used  in  daily 
life  and  in  science  by  which  to  test  reality. 

If  we  ask  the  philosophically  unsophisticated  individual 
why  he  believes  that  his  house  still  exists  when  he  is  away 
from  it  and  has  no  immediate  evidence  of  the  fact,  he  will  tell 
you  it  is  because  he  has  found  that  he  can  go  back  to  it  time 
and  again  and  see  it  and  walk  into  it.  It  never  fails  him  when 
he  acts  upon  the  assumption  that  it  is  there.  He  would 
never  tell  you  that  he  believed  in  its  existence  when  he  was 
not  experiencing  it  because  his  mental  picture  of  his  house 
stood  for  and  represented  accurately  an  object  in  the  real 
world  which  was  nevertheless  of  a  different  order  of  existence 
from  his  mental  picture.  When  you  ask  the  physicist  why 
he  believes  that  the  laws  of  motion  are  true,  he  will  tell  you 


106  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

that  it  is  because  he  finds  that  bodies  always  do  behave 
according  to  them.  He  can  predict  just  what  a  body  will 
do  under  given  circumstances.  He  is  never  disappointed 
however  long  he  takes  it  for  granted  that  the  laws  of  motion 
are  true  and  that  bodies  behave  according  to  them.  The 
only  thing  that  could  make  him  question  their  truth  would 
be  to  find  some  body  which  did  not  prove  to  behave  in 
accordance  with  them.  The  criterion  is  the  same  in  both 
cases.  It  is  the  practical  criterion  of  what  as  a  matter  of 
fact  will  work.  That  which  can  safely  be  taken  for  granted 
as  a  basis  for  further  action  is  regarded  as  real  and  true.  It 
remains  real  so  long,  and  only  so  long,  as  it  continues  to 
fulfil  this  condition.  As  soon  as  it  ceases  to  do  so,  it 
ceases  to  be  regarded  as  real.  When  a  man  finds  that  he 
can  no  longer  obtain  the  accustomed  experience  of  seeing 
and  entering  his  house,  he  ceases  to  regard  it  as  real.  It 
has  burned  down,  or  been  pulled  down.  When  a  physicist 
finds  that  a  body  does  not,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  behave  as  a 
given  law  leads  him  to  expect  it  would  behave,  he  ceases  to 
regard  the  law  as  true. 

The  contrast  between  the  naive  view  of  the  criterion 
of  reality  and  the  one  we  have  just  been  discussing  may 
be  brought  out  by  considering  how  we  should  have  to 
interpret  from  each  standpoint  the  constant  succession  of 
facts  in  the  history  of  science  which  have  ceased  to  be  facts. 
For  illustration  take  the  former  fact  that  the  earth  is  flat. 
It  ceased  to  be  a  fact,  says  the  theory  we  have  been 
reviewing,  because  further  thought-constructions  of  the  real 
world  convinced  us  that  there  is  no  reality  which  the  idea 
"flat-world"  represents.  The  idea  "  round- world  "  alone 
reproduces  reality.  It  ceased  to  be  a  fact,  says  the  naive 
view,  because  it  ceased  to  be  a  safe  guide  for  action.  Men 
found  they  could  sail  around  the  world.  Correspondence  in 
one  case  is  pictorial,  and  its  existence  or  non-existence  can, 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          107 

as  we  have  seen,  never  be  ascertained.  In  the  other,  corre- 
spondence is  response,  adjustment,  the  co-meeting  of  specific 
conditions  in  further  constituting  of  experience. 

In  actual  life,  therefore,  the  criterion  of  reality  which  we 
use  is  a  practical  one.  The  test  of  reality  does  not  consist 
in  ascertaining  the  relationship  between  an  idea  and  an  x 
which  is  not  idea,  but  in  ascertaining  what  experience  can 
be  taken  for  granted  as  a  safe  basis  for  securing  other  expe- 
riences. The  evident  advantage  of  the  latter  view,  leaving 
aside  for  the  moment  the  question  of  its  adequacy  in  other 
respects,  is  that  it  avoids  the  fundamental  skepticism  at  once 
suggested  by  the  former.  How  can  we  ever  be  sure  that  the 
fact  which  we  have  discovered  will  stand  the  test  of  further 
thought-constructions  ?  Perhaps  it  comes  no  nearer  to  reality 
than  the  discarded  one.  Obviously  we  never  can  be  sure 
that  any  particular  content  of  thought  represents  reality  so 
accurately  and  perfectly  that  it  will  never  be  subject  to  revi- 
sion. If,  however,  the  test  of  reality  is  the  adequacy  of  a 
given  content  of  consciousness  as  a  stimulus  to  action,  as  a 
mode  of  control,  we  have  an  applicable  standard.  A  given 
content  of  consciousness  is  real — is  a  fact — so  long  as  the 
act  resulting  from  it  is  adequate  in  adaptation  to  other  con- 
tents. It  ceases  to  be  real  as  soon  as  the  act  it  stimulates 
proves  to  be  inadequate. 

The  view  which  places  the  ultimate  test  of  facts,  not  in 
any  relationship  of  contents  or  existences,  but  in  the  prac- 
tical outcome  of  thought,  is  the  one  which  seems  to  follow 
necessarily  from  a  thoroughgoing  conception  of  the  judg- 
ment as  a  function — an  act.  Our  fundamental  biological 
conception  of  the  activities  of  living  organisms  is  that  acts 
exist  for  the  sake  of  their  results.  Acts  are  always  stimu- 
lated by  some  definite  set  of  conditions,  and  their  value  is 
always  tested  by  the  adequacy  with  which  they  meet  this  set 
of  conditions.  The  judgment  is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  It 


108  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

is  always  an  act  stimulated  by  some  set  of  conditions  which 
needs  readjusting.  Its  outcome  is  a  readjustment  whose 
value  is  and  can  be  tested  only  by  its  adequacy.  It  is 
accordingly  entirely  in  line  with  our  reigning  biological 
conceptions  to  expect  to  find  the  ultimate  criterion  of  truth 
and  reality  in  the  practical  outcome  of  thought,  and  to  seek 
for  an  understanding  of  the  nature  of  the  "real"  and  of 
the  "ideal"  within  the  total  activity  of  judgment. 

One  difficulty  besets  us  at  the  outset  of  such  an  investiga- 
tion— that  of  being  sure  that  we  have  a  genuine  judgment 
under  examination.  A  large  portion  of  the  so-called  judg- 
ments considered  by  logicians,  even  by  those  who  emphasize 
the  truth  that  a  judgment  is  an  acf,  are  really  not  judgments 
at  all,  but  contents  of 'thought  which  are  the  outcome  of 
judgments — what  might  be  called  dead  judgments,  instead 
of  live  judgments.  When  we  analyze  a  real  act  of  judgment, 
as  it  occurs  in  a  living  process  of  thought,  we  find  given 
elements  which  are  always  present.  There  is  always  a  cer- 
tain situation  which  demands  a  reaction.  The  situation  is 
always  in  part  determined  and  taken  for  granted,  and  in 
part  questioned.  It  is  determined  in  so  far  as  it  is  a  definite 
situation  of  some  sort ;  it  is  undetermined  in  so  far  as  it  fur- 
nishes an  inadequate  basis  for  further  action  and  therefore 
comes  to  consciousness  as  a  problem.  For  example,  take  one 
of  the  judgments  Bosanquet  uses.  "This  is  bread."  We 
have  first  to  inquire  when  such  a  judgment  actually  occurs 
in  the  living  process  of  thought.  A  man  does  not  make 
such  a  judgment  in  the  course  of  his  thinking  unless  there 
is  some  instigation  to  do  so.  Perhaps  he  is  in  doubt  as  to 
whether  the  white  object  he  perceives  is  bread  or  cake.  He 
wants  some  bread,  but  does  not  want  cake.  A  closer  inspec- 
tion convinces  him  that  it  is  bread,  and  the  finished  judg- 
ment is  formulated  in  the  proposition:  "This  is  bread." 
What  is  the  test  of  the  reality  of  the  bread,  and  the  truth  of 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OP  JUDGMENT          109 

the  judgment  ?  Evidently  the  act  based  on  it.  He  eats  the 
bread.  If  it  tastes  like  bread  and  affects  him  like  bread, 
then  the  bread  was  real  and  the  judgment  true.  If,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  does  not  taste  like  bread,  or  if  it  makes  him 
violently  ill,  then  the  "bread"  was  not  real  and  the  judgment 
was  false.  In  either  case,  the  "this" — the  experience  to  be 
interpreted — is  unquestioned.  The  man  does  not  question 
the  fact  that  he  has  a  perception  of  a  white  object.  So  much 
is  taken  for  granted  and  is  unquestioned  within  that  judg- 
ment. But  there  is  another  part  of  the  experience  which  is 
questioned,  and  which  remains  tentative  up  to  the  conclusion 
of  the  act  of  judgment;  that  is  the  doubt  as  to  whether  the 
perceived  white  object  is  bread  or  something  else.  Every 
live  judgment,  every  judgment  as  it  normally  occurs  in  the 
vital  process  of  thought,  must  have  these  phases.  It  is  only 
when  a  judgment  is  taken  out  of  its  context  and  reduced  to 
a  mere  memorandum  of  past  judgments  that  it  fails  to  reveal 
such  parts.  The  man  may,  of  course,  go  farther  back.  He 
may  wonder  whether  this  is  really  white  or  not.  But  he  falls 
back  then  on  something  else  which  he  takes  unquestioningly 
— a  "this"  experience  of  some  sort  or  other. 

So  far  we  have  considered  the  practical  criterion  of  reality 
merely  as  the  one  which  is  actually  operative  in  everyday 
life,  and  as  the  one  suggested  by  our  biological  theory  of  the 
functions  of  living  organisms.  It  also  offers  a  suggestion 
for  the  modified  view  of  the  nature  of  reality  for  which  we 
are  in  search.  Our  previous  discussion  brought  out  inci- 
dentally a  contradiction  in  the  traditional  theory  of  the 
nature  of  reality  which  it  will  be  worth  while  to  consider 
further.  In  dealing  with  the  subject  of  the  judgment, 
reality  seemed  to  be  made  synonymous  with  fact.  In  this 
sense  fact,  or  the  real,  was  set  off  against  the  ideal.  Knowl- 
edge was  viewed  as  the  correspondence  between  real  and 
ideal.  When  we  came  to  deal  with  the  ideal  itself — with 


110  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

the  predicate  of  the  judgment  —  there  appeared  in  it  an  ele- 
ment of  fact  or  reality  which  proved  a  serious  stumbling- 
block  for  the  theory.  As  image  in  my  mind,  the  idea  is 
just  as  real  as  the  so-called  facts ;  but  this  sort  of  reality 
according  to  the  theory  in  question  is  neither  the  reality 
about  which  we  are  judging  nor  a  real  quality  of  it.  Both 
Bradley  and  Bosanquet  are  forced  to  admit  that  the  judg- 
ment ignores  it,  and  is  in  so  far  by  nature  inadequate  to  its 
appointed  task  of  knowing  reality. 

The  suggestion  which  the  situation  offers  for  a  new  theory 
is  that  the  view  of  reality  has  been  too  narrow.  Reality 
must  evidently  be  a  broad  enough  term  to  cover  both  fact 
and  idea.  If  so,  the  reality  must  be  nothing  more  nor  less 
than  the  total  process*  of  experience  with  its  continual 
opposition  of  fact  and  idea,  and  their  continual  resolution 
through  activity.  That  which  previous  theory  has  been 
calling  the  real  is  not  the  total  reality,  but  merely  one  aspect 
of  it.  The  problem  of  relation  of  fact  and  idea  is  thus  the 
problem  of  the  relation  of  one  form  of  reality  to  another, 
and  so  a  determinate  soluble  one,  not  a  merely  metaphysical 
or  general  one.  Granting  this,  does  it  still  remain  true  that 
reality  in  the  narrower  sense,  reality  as  fact,  can  be  regarded 
as  a  different  order  of  existence  from  the  ideal,  and  set  over 
against  the  thought-process  ?  Evidently  not.  Fact  and  idea 
become  merely  two  aspects  of  a  total  reality.  The  way  in 
which  fact  and  idea  are  distinguished  has  already  been  sug- 
gested by  the  practical  and  biological  criterion  of  fact,  or 
reality  in  the  narrower  sense.  From  this  point  of  view, 
fact  is  not  a  different  order  of  existence  from  idea,  but  is 
merely  a  part  of  the  total  process  of  experience  which  func- 
tions in  a  given  way.  It  is  merely  that  part  of  experience 
which  is  taken  as  given,  and  which  serves  as  a  stimulus  to 
action.  Thus  the  essential  nature  of  fact,  or  reality  in  the 
popular  sense,  falls  not  at  all  on  the  side  of  its  content,  but 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          111 

on  the  side  of  its  function.  Similarly  the  ideal  is  merely 
that  part  of  the  total  experience  which  is  taken  as  tentative. 
There  is  no  problem  as  to  how  either  of  them  is  related  to 
reality.  In  this  relationship  they  are  reality.  That  which 
previous  theories  had  been  calling  the  whole  of  reality  now 
appears  as  merely  one  aspect  of  it — the  fact  aspect — arti- 
ficially isolated  from  the  rest. 

When  we  translate  this  view  of  the  nature  of  reality  into 
terms  of  a  theory  of  the  judgment,  we  find  that  we  can  agree 
with  Bosanquet  in  his  definition  of  a  judgment.  It  is  an 
act,  and  an  act  which  refers  an  ideal  content  to  reality. 
The  judgment  must  be  an  act,  because  it  is  essentially  an 
adaptation — a  reaction  toward  a  given  situation.  The  sub- 
ject of  the  judgment  is  that  part  of  the  content  of  experience 
which  represents  the  situation  to  be  reacted  to.  It  is  that 
which  is  taken  for  granted  as  given  in  each  case.  Now  this 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  reality — in  the  narrower  sense  of  that 
term.  What  Bosanquet  has  been  calling  reality  now  appears 
merely  as  the  subject  of  the  judgment  taken  out  of  its  nor- 
mal function  and  considered  as  an  isolated  thing.  It  is  an 
artificial  abstraction.  It  is  accordingly  true,  as  Bosanquet 
insists,  that  the  subject  of  the  judgment  must  always  be 
reality — both  in  his  sense  of  the  term  and  in  ours.  This 
reality  is  not  real,  however,  by  virtue  of  its  independence 
from  the  judgment,  but  by  virtue  of  its  function  within  the 
judgment.  His  fundamental  problem  with  reference  to  the 
subject  of  the  judgment  is  disposed  of  from  this  point  of 
view.  The  subject  is  wholly  within  the  judgment,  not  in 
any  sense  outside  of  it;  but  it  is  at  the  same  time  true  that 
the  subject  of  the  judgment  is  reality.  The  fact  that  the 
subjects  of  all  judgments — even  those  of  the  most  elementary 
type — bear  evident  marks  of  the  work  done  by  thought  upon 
them,  ceases  to  be  a  problem.  The  subject  is  essentially  a 
thing  constituted  by  the  doubt-inquiry  process,  and  func- 


112  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

tioning  within  it.  The  necessity  for  an  intermediate  real 
world  as  it  is  to  me  between  the  real  world  and  the  knowing 
process  disappears,  because  the  real  world  as  it  is  to  me  is 
the  only  real  world  of  which  the  judgment  can  take  account. 
There  is  no  longer  any  divorce  between  the  content  of  the 
subject  and  its  existence.  Reality  in  his  sense  of  the  term 
— reality  as  fact  —  does  not  fall  on  the  side  of  existence  in 
distinction  from  content,  but  on  the  side  of  function  in  dis- 
tinction from  content. 

The  predicate  of  the  judgment  is  that  part  of  the  total 
experience  which  is  taken  as  doubtful,  or  tentative.  As  we 
have  seen,  every  act  of  adaptation  involves  a  definite  situa- 
tion to  be  reacted  to  (subject)  and  an  indefinite  or  tenta- 
tive material  with  which  to  react  (predicate).  We  have 
pointed  out  that  a  situation  which  demands  a  judgment  never 
appears  in  consciousness  as  mere  questioned  or  questionable 
situation.1  There  is  always  present,  as  soon  as  the  doubt 
arises,  some  sort  of  tentative  solution.  This  is  the  predicate 
or  idea.  Just  as  the  fact,  or  real  in  the  narrower  sense,  is 
that  which  is  taken  as  given  in  the  situation,  so  the  ideal 
is  that  which  is  taken  as  tentative.  Its  ideality  does  not 
consist  in  its  reference  to  another  order  of  existence,  the 
objective  world  of  meanings,  but  in  its  function  within  the 
judgment,  the  estimate  of  the  whole  situation  as  leading  up 
to  the  adequate  act.  Just  as  we  no  longer  have  any  need  for 
the  mediation  of  the  real  world  as  known  to  me  between  sub- 
ject and  reality,  so  we  no  longer  need  the  objective  world  of 
meanings  to  bridge  the  chasm  between  the  predicate  and 
reality.  The  difficulty  of  understanding  how  ideas  can  be 
used  to  build  up  facts  disappears  when  we  regard  fact  and 
idea,  not  as  different  orders  of  existence,  but  as  contents 
marking  different  phases  of  a  total  function. 

i  Or,  the  situation  as  questioned  is  itself  a  fact,  and  a  perfectly  determinate 
(though  not  determined)  one.  See  pp.  38,  50. 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          113 

Ideas,  as  Bosanquet  represented  them,  proved  to  be 
extremely  unsatisfactory  tools  to  use  in  building  up  a  knowl- 
edge of  reality.  In  the  first  place,  their  value  as  instruments 
of  thought  depends  upon  their  universality.  We  have 
already  reviewed  Bosanquet' s  difficulties  in  attempting  to 
explain  the  universality  of  ideas.  The  universality  of  an  idea 
cannot  reside  in  its  mere  existence  as  image.  Its  existence 
is  purely  particular.  Its  universality  must  reside  in  its  ref- 
erence to  something  outside  of  itself.  But  no  explanation  of 
how  the  particular  existence — image — could  refer  to  another 
and  fuller  content  of  a  different  order  of  existence  could  be 
discovered.  The  fact  of  reference  remained  an  ultimate 
mystery.  From  the  new  point  of  view  the  image  gains  its 
universality  through  its  organizing  function.  It  represents 
an  organized  habit  which  may  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
present  situation,  and  which  serves,  by  directing  action,  to 
organize  and  unify  experience  as  a  whole.  It  is  only  as  func- 
tion that  the  concept  of  reference  can  be  made  intelligible. 

Of  course,  considered  as  content,  the  idea  is  just  as  par- 
ticular from  this  point  of  view  as  from  any  other.  We  still 
have  to  discuss  the  question  as  to  whether  or  not  the  particu- 
larity of  the  idea  has  a  logical  value.  The  fact  that  it  had  none 
in  Bosanquet' s  theory  sets  a  limit  to  the  validity  of  thought. 
But  if  the  real  test  of  the  validity  of  a  judgment  is  the  act 
in  which  it  issues,  then  the  existential  aspect  of  the  idea 
must  have  logical  value.  The  existential  aspect  of  the  idea 
is  the  "my"  side  of  it.  It  is  as  my  personal  experience  that 
it  exists.  But  it  is  only  as  my  idea  that  it  has  any  impulsive 
power,  or  can  issue  in  action.  Far  from  being  ignored, 
therefore,  the  existential  aspect  is  essential  to  the  logical, 
the  determinative,  value  of  an  idea. 

Ideas,  according  to  the  representational  theory  of  knowl- 
edge, proved  to  be  a  poor  medium  for  knowing  reality  in 
still  another  respect.  They  are  in  their  very  nature  contents 


114  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

that  have  been  reduced  from  the  fulness  of  experience  to 
mere  index-signs.  Even  though  their  reference  to  a  fuller 
content  in  the  objective  world  of  meanings  presented  no 
problem,  still  this  objective  world  of  meanings  is  far  removed 
from  reality.  And  yet,  in  order  to  know,  we  must  be  able 
to  affirm  ideas  of  reality.  On  the  functional  theory  of  ideas, 
their  value  does  not  rest  at  all  upon  their  representational 
nature.  They  are  not  taken  either  in  their  existence  or  in 
their  meaning  as  representations  of  any  other  content.  They 
are  taken  as  contents  which  mark  a  given  function,  and  their 
value  is  determined  entirely  by  the  adequacy  of  the  function 
of  which  they  are  the  conscious  expression.  Their  content 
may  be  as  meager  as  you  please.  It  may  have  been  obtained 
by  a  long  process  of  "reducing  and  transforming  sensory 
experience,  but  if  it  serve  to  enable  its  possessor  to  meet  the 
situation  which  called  it  up  with  the  appropriate  act,  then  it 
has  truth  and  value  in  the  fullest  sense.  The  reduction  of 
the  idea  to  a  mere  index-sign  presents  no  problem  when  we 
realize  that  it  is  the  tool  of  a  given  function,  not  the  sign 
for  a  different  and  fuller  content.  The  idea  thus  becomes  a 
commendable  economy  in  the  thought-process,  rather  than  a 
reprehensible  departure  from  reality. 

We  have  already  upon  general  considerations  criticised 
the  point*of  view  which  holds  that  ideality  consists  in  refer- 
ence to  another  content.  In  arguing  that  this  reference 
cannot  be  primarily  to  reality  itself,  but  rather  to  an  inter- 
mediate world  of  meanings,  Bosanquet  cites  the  question 
and  the  negative  judgment.  In  the  question  ideas  are  not 
affirmed  of  reality,  and  in  negation  they  are  definitely  denied 
of  reality,  hence  their  reference  cannot  be  to  reality.  It  must 
therefore  be  to  an  objective  world  of  meanings.  It  may  be 
worth  while  to  point  out  in  passing  that,  from  the  functional 
point  of  view,  the  part  played  by  ideas  in  the  question  and 
in  negative  judgment  is  the  same  that  it  is  in  affirmation. 


BOSANQUET'S  THEOBY  OF  JUDGMENT          115 

We  have  brought  out  the  fact  that  all  judgment  arises  in 
a  doubt.  The  earliest  stage  of  judgment  is  accordingly  a 
question.  Whether  the  process  stops  at  that  point,  or  is 
carried  on  to  an  affirmation  or  negation,  depends  upon  the 
particular  conditions.  The  ideas  which  appear  in  questions 
present  no  other  problem  than  those  of  affirmation.  They 
are  ideas,  not  by  virtue  of  their  reference  to  another  content 
in  the  world  of  meanings,  but  by  virtue  of  their  function, 
i.  e.j  that  of  constituting  that  part  of  the  total  experience 
which  is  taken  as  doubtful,  and  hence  as  in  process. 

In  order  to  make  this  point  clear  with  reference  to  nega- 
tive judgments,  it  will  be  necessary  to  consider  the  relation 
of  negative  and  positive  judgments  somewhat  more  in  detail. 
All  judgment  is  in  its  earliest  stages  a  question,  but  a  ques- 
tion is  never  mere  question.  There  are  always  present  some 
suggestions  of  an  answer,  which  make  the  process  really  a 
disjunctive  judgment.  A  question  might  be  defined  as  a 
disjunctive  judgment  in  which  one  member  of  the  disjunc- 
tion is  expressed  and  the  others  implied.  If  the  process 
goes  on  to  take  the  form  of  affirmation  or  negation,  one  of 
the  suggested  answers  is  selected.  To  follow  out  the  illus- 
tration of  the  bread  used  above,  the  judgment  arises  in  a 
doubt  as  to  the  nature  of  the  white  object  perceived,  but  the 
doubt  never  takes  the  form  of  a  blank  question.  It  at  once 
suggests  certain  possible  solutions  drawn  from  the  mass  of 
organized  experience  at  the  command  of  the  person  judging. 
At  this  stage  the  judgment  is  disjunctive.  In  the  illustra- 
tion it  would  probably  take  the  form:  "This  is  either  bread 
or  cake."  The  further  course  of  the  judgment  rejects  the 
cake  alternative,  and  selects  the  bread,  and  the  final  outcome 
of  the  judgment  is  formulated  in  the  proposition:  "This  is 
bread."  But  how  did  it  happen  that  it  did  not  take  the 
form:  "This  is  not  cake"  ?  That  proposition  is  also  involved 
in  the  outcome,  and  implied  in  the  judgment  made.  The 


116  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

answer  is  that  the  form  taken  by  the  final  outcome  depends 
entirely  on  the  direction  of  interest  of  the  person  making 
the  judgment.  If  his  interest  happened  to  lie  in  obtaining 
bread,  then  the  outcome  would  naturally  take  the  form: 
"This  is  bread,"  and  his  act  would  consist  in  eating  it.  If 
he  happened  to  want  cake,  the  natural  form  would  be,  "This 
is  not  cake,"  and  his  act  would  consist  in  refraining  from 
eating.  In  other  words,  the  question  as  to  whether  a  judg- 
ment turns  out  to  be  negative  or  positive  is  a  question  of 
whether  the  stress  of  interest  happens  to  fall  on  the  selected 
or  on  the  rejected  portions  of  the  original  disjunction.  Every 
determination  of  a  subject  through  a  predicate  includes  both. 
The  selection  of  one  or  the  other  according  to  interest  affects 
the  final  formulation  of  the  process,  but  does  not  change  the 
relations  of  its  various  phases.  An  idea  in  a  negative  judg- 
ment is  just  what  it  is  in  a  positive  judgment.  In  neither  case 
is  it  constituted  an  idea  by  reference  to  some  other  content. 

So  far  we  have  outlined  Bosanquet's  theory  of  the  judg- 
ment ;  have  noted  the  apparently  insoluble  problems  inherent 
in  his  system,  and  have  sketched  a  radically  different  theory 
which  offered  a  possible  solution  for  his  difficulties.  It  now 
remains  to  develop  the  implications  of  the  new  theory  fur- 
ther by  comparing  its  application  to  some  of  the  more  impor- 
tant problems  of  logic  with  that  of  Bosanquet.  In  closing 
we  shall  have  to  inquire  to  what  extent  the  new  theory  of 
the  judgment  with  its  metaphysical  implications  has  proved 
more  satisfactory  than  that  of  Bosanquet. 

The  special  problems  to  be  considered  are  (1)  the  rela- 
tion of  judgment  to  inference;  (2)  the  parts  of  the  judg- 
ment and  their  relationship;  (3)  the  time  element  in  the 
judgment;  and  (4)  the  way  in  which  one  judgment  can  be 
separated  from  another. 

1.  The  discussion  of  the  relation  between  judgment  and 
inference  comes  up  incidentally  in  Bosanquet's  treatment  of 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OP  JUDGMENT          117 

the  distinction  between  a  judgment  and  a  proposition  (p.  79). 
The  proposition,  he  says,  is  merely  the  enunciative  sentence 
which  represents  the  act  of  thought  called  judgment.  With 
this  distinction  we  should  agree.  In  his  discussion  of  the 
point,  however,  he  criticises  Hegel's  doctrine  that  a  judg- 
ment is  distinguished  from  a  proposition  in  that  a  judgment 
maintains  itself  against  a  doubt,  while  a  proposition  is  a 
mere  temporal  affirmation,  not  implying  the  presence  of  a 
doubt.  The  ground  of  his  criticism  is  that  judgment  must 
be  regarded  as  operative  before  the  existence  of  a  conscious 
doubt,  and  that,  while  it  is  true,  as  Hegel  suggests,  that 
judgment  and  inference  begin  together,  they  both  begin  far- 
ther back  than  the  point  at  which  conscious  doubt  arises. 
Doubt  marks  the  point  at  which  inference  becomes  conscious 
of  its  ground.  Now,  it  is  undoubted  that  inferences  in 
which  the  ground  is  implicit  exist  at  an  earlier  stage  of 
experience  than  those  in  which  it  is  explicit.  The  former 
we  usually  call  simple  apprehension,  and  the  latter  judgment. 
What  Bosanquet  wishes  to  do  is  to  make  the  term  "judg- 
ment "  cover  both  the  implicit  and  the  explicit  activities. 
The  question  at  once  arises  whether  such  a  use  of  terms  is 
accurate.  There  is  certainly  a  wide  difference  between  an 
inference  which  is  conscious  of  its  ground,  and  one  which  is 
not.  It  is  conceivably  a  distinction  of  philosophic  impor- 
tance. To  slur  the  difference  by  applying  one  name  to  both 
accomplishes  nothing.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  pres- 
ence of  a  conscious  doubt  is  the  criterion  of  judgment 
adopted  in  the  standpoint  from  which  we  have  been  criticis- 
ing Bosanquet' s  theory.  We  should  accordingly  make  the 
term  "inference"  a  wider  one  than  the  term  "judgment." 
A  judgment  is  an  inference  which  is  conscious  of  its  ground. 
Since  fact  and  idea  have  been  represented  as  constituted  in 
and  through  judgment,  the  question  which  at  once  suggests 
itself  is:  What,  from  such  a  standpoint,  is  the  criterion  of 


118  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

fact  and  idea  in  the  stage  of  experience  previous  to  the 
appearance  of  judgment?  The  answer  is  that  the  question 
involves  the  psychological  fallacy.  There  is  no  such  distinc- 
tion as  fact  and  idea  in  experience  previous  to  the  appear- 
ance of  judgment.  The  distinction  between  fact  and  idea 
arises  only  at  the  higher  level  of  experience  at  which  infer- 
ence becomes  conscious  of  its  grounds.  To  ask  what  they 
were  previous  to  that  is  to  ask  what  they  were  before  they 
were — a  question  which,  of  course,  cannot  be  answered. 

Our  reason  for  not  adopting  Hegel's  distinction  between 
a  judgment  and  a  proposition  would  accordingly  not  be  the 
same  as  Bosanquet's'.  The  question  has  already  been 
touched  upon  in  the  distinction  between  dead  and  live  judg- 
ments. What  Hegel  calls  a  proposition  is  really  nothing 
but  a  dead  judgment.  His  illustration  of  a  temporal  affirma- 
tion is  the  sentence:  "A  carriage  is  passing  the  house." 
That  sentence  would  be  a  judgment,  he  says,  only  in  case 
there  were  some  doubt  as  to  whether  or  not  a  carriage  was 
passing.  But  the  question  to  be  answered  first  is:  When 
would  such  a  "statement"  occur  in  the  course  of  our  expe- 
rience? It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  any  circumstances 
in  which  it  would  naturally  occur,  unless  there  were  some 
doubt  to  be  solved  either  of  our  own  or  of  another.  Per- 
haps one  is  expecting  a  friend,  and  does  not  know  at  first 
whether  it  is  a  carriage  or  a  cart  which  is  passing.  Perhaps 
some  one  has  been  startled,  and  asks:  "What  is  this 
noise?"  What  Hegel  wishes  to  call  a  proposition  is,  accord- 
ingly, nothing  but  a  judgment  taken  out  of  its  setting. 

2.  In  dealing  with  the  traditional  three  parts  of  the  judg- 
ment— subject,  predicate,  and  copula — Bosanquet  disposes 
of  the  copula  at  once,  by  dividing  the  judgment  into  subject 
and  predication.  But  the  two  terms  "subject"  and  "predi- 
cation" are  not  co-ordinate.  Subject,  as  he  uses  it,  is  a 
static  term  indicating  a  content.  Predication  is  a  dynamic 


BOSANQUET'S  THEOKY  OF  JUDGMENT          119 

term  indicating  the  act  of  predicating.  It  implies  some- 
thing which  is  predicated  of  something  else,  i.  e.,  two  con- 
tents and  the  act  of  bringing  them  into  relation.  Now,  if 
what  we  understand  by  the  copula  is  the  act  of  predicating 
abstracted  from  the  content  which  is  predicated  of  another 
content,  then  it  does  not  dispose  of  the  copula  as  a  separate 
factor  in  judgment  to  include  thing  predicated  and  act  of 
predicating  under  the  single  term  "predication."  The  term 
"  predication "  might  just  as  reasonably  be  made  to  absorb 
the  subject  as  well,  and  would  then  appear — as  it  really  is 
— synonymous  with  the  term  "judgment." 

But  Bosanquet's  difficulties  with  the  parts  of  the  judg- 
ment are  not  disposed  of  even  by  the  reduction  to  subject 
and  predication.  He  goes  on  to  say: 

It  is  plain  that  the  judgment,  however  complex,  is  a  single  idea. 
The  relations  within  it  are  not  relations  between  ideas,  but  are 
themselves  a  part  of  the  idea  which  is  predicated.  In  other  words, 
the  subject  must  be  outside  the  judgment  in  order  that  the  content 
of  the  judgment  may  be  predicated  of  it.  If  not,  we  fall  back  into 
"  my  idea  of  the  earth  goes  round  my  idea  of  the  sun,"  and  this,  as 
we  have  seen,  is  never  the  meaning  of  "  The  earth  goes  round  the 
sun."  What  we  want  is,  "  The  real  world  has  in  it  as  a  fact  what 
I  mean  by  earth-going-round-sun."  (P.  81.) 

We  have  already  pointed  out  the  difficulties  into  which 
Bosanquet's  presupposition  as  to  the  nature  of  reality 
plunges  him.  This  is  but  another  technical  statement  of 
the  same  problem.  If  the  subject  is  really  outside  of  judg- 
ment, then  the  entire  content  of  the  judgment  must  fall  on 
the  side  of  predicate,  or  idea.  In  the  paragraphs  that  fol- 
low, Bosanquet  brings  out  the  point  that  the  judgment  must 
nevertheless  contain  the  distinction  of  subject  and  predi- 
cate, since  it  is  impossible  to  affirm  without  introducing  a 
distinction  into  the  content  of  the  affirmation.  Yet  he  con- 
siders this  distinction  to  be  merely  a  difference  within  an 
identity.  It  serves  to  mark  off  the  grammatical  subject 


120  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

and  predicate,  but  cannot  be  the  essential  distinction  of 
subject  and  predicate.  His  solution  of  the  puzzle  is  really 
the  one  for  which  we  have  been  contending,  i.  e.,  that  "  the 
real  world  is  primarily  and  emphatically  my  world,"  but  he 
still  cannot  be  satisfied  with  that  kind  of  a  real  world  as 
ultimate.  Behind  the  subject  which  presents  my  world  he 
postulates  a  real  world  which  is  not  my  world,  but  which  my 
world  represents.  It  is  the  relation  between  this  real  world 
and  the  total  content  of  a  judgment  which  he  considers  the 
essential  relation  of  judgment.  This  leaves  him — as  we 
have  pointed  out — as  far  as  ever  from  a  theory  of  the  rela- 
tion of  thought  to  reality,  and,  moreover,  with  no  criterion 
for  the  distinction  of  subject  and  predicate  within  the  judg- 
ment. To  say  that  it  is -a  difference  within  an  identity  does 
not  explain  how,  on  a  mere  basis  of  content,  such  a  difference 
is  distinguished  within  an  identity  or  how  it  assumes  the 
importance  it  actually  has.  He  vibrates  between  taking  the 
whole  intellectual  content  as  predicate,  the  reality  to  be  rep- 
resented as  subject  (in  which  case  the  copula  would  be  the 
"contact  of  sense-perception")  and  a  distinction  appearing 
without  reasonable  ground  or  bearing  within  the  intellectual 
content.  When  subject  and  predicate  are  regarded  as  the 
contents  in  which  phases  of  a  function  appear,  this  difficulty 
no  longer  exists. 

3.  In  discussing  the  time  relations  within  judgment  (p.  85) 
Bosanquet  first  disposes  of  the  view  which  holds  that  the  sub- 
ject is  prior  to  the  predicate  in  time,  and  is  distinguished  from 
the  predicate  by  its  priority.  He  emphasizes  the  fact  that  no 
content  of  consciousness  can  have  the  significance  of  a  sub- 
ject, except  with  reference  to  something  already  referred  to 
it  as  predicate.  But  while  it  cannot  be  true  that  the  parts 
of  the  judgment  fall  outside  of  one  another  in  time,  it  is  yet 
evident  that  in  one  sense  at  least  the  judgment  is  in  time. 
To  make  this  clear,  Bosanquet  draws  a  provisional  distinc- 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          121 

tion  between  the  process  of  arriving  at  a  judgment  and  the 
completed  judgment.  The  process  of  arriving  at  a  judg- 
ment is  a  process  of  passing  from  a  subject  with  an  indefinite 
provisional  predicate — a  sort  of  disjunctive  judgment — to 
a  subject  with  a  defined  predicate.  This  process  is  evidently 
in  time,  but  it  is  as  evidently  not  a  transition  from  subject 
to  predicate.  It  is,  as  he  says,  a  modification,  pari  passu, 
of  both  subject  and  predicate.  The  same  distinction,  he 
thinks,  must  hold  of  the  judgment  when  completed.  But  this 
throws  us  into  a  dilemma  with  reference  to  the  time-factor 
in  judgment.  Time  either  is  or  is  not  an  essential  factor  in 
judgment.  If  it  is  not  essential,  then  how  explain  the  evi- 
dent fact  that  the  judgment  as  an  intellectual  process  does 
have  duration  ?  If  it  is  essential,  then  how  explain  the  fact 
that  its  parts  do  not  fall  outside  one  another  in  time  ?  Bosan- 
quet  evidently  regards  the  former  problem  as  the  easier  of 
the  two.  His  solution  is  that,  while  the  judgment  is  an 
intellectual  process  in  time,  still  this  is  a  purely  external 
aspect.  The  essential  relation  between  subject  and  predicate 
is  not  in  time,  since  they  are  coexistent ;  therefore  time  is  not 
an  essential  element  in  judgment. 

The  first  point  at  which  we  take  issue  with  this  treatment 
of  time  in  relation  to  judgment  is  in  the  distinction  between 
the  process  of  arriving  at  the  judgment  and  the  completed 
judgment.  Bosanquet  himself  defines  judgment  as  an  intel- 
lectual act  by  which  an  ideal  content  is  referred  to  reality. 
Now,  at  what  point  does  this  act  begin?  Certainly  at  the 
point  where  an  ideal  content  is  first  applying  to  reality,  and 
this,  as  he  points  out,  is  at  the  beginning  of  the  process 
which  he  describes  as  the  process  of  arriving  at  a  judgment. 
It  is  nothing  to  the  point  that  at  this  stage  the  predicate  is 
tentative,  while  later  it  becomes  defined.  His  process  of 
arriving  at  the  judgment  is  exactly  the  process  we  have 
been  describing  as  the  early  stages  of  any  and  every  judg- 


122  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

ment.  When  lie  talks  about  the  judgment  as  completed,  he 
has  apparently  shifted  from  the  dynamic  view  of  judgment 
implied  in  his  definition  to  a  static  view.  All  he  could  mean 
by  a  completed  judgment — in  distinction  to  the  total  activity 
of  arriving  at  a  judgment — is  the  new  content  of  which  we 
find  ourselves  possessed  when  the  total  process  of  predication 
is  complete.  But  this  content  is  not  a  judgment  at  all.  It 
is  a  new  construction  of  reality  which  may  serve  either  as 
subject  or  as  predicate  in  future  judgments. 

Now,  if  we  regard  the  judgment  as  the  total  activity  by 
which  an  ideal  content  is  referred  to  reality,  then  must  we 
not  regard  time  as  an  essential  element  ?  Bosanquet  answers 
this  question  in  the  negative,  because  he  believes  that  if 
time  is  an  essential  element,  then  the  parts  of  the  judgment 
must  necessarily  fall  outside  one  another  in  time.  But  is 
this  necessary?  If  the  essence  of  judgment  is  the  very 
modification,  pari  passu,  of  subject  and  predicate,  then 
time  must  be  an  essential  element  in  it,  but  it  is  not  at  all 
necessary  that  its  elements  should  fall  outside  of  one  another 
in  time.  In  other  words,  the  dilemma  which  Bosanquet  points 
out  on  p.  87  is  not  a  genuine  one.  There  is  no  difficulty 
involved  in  admitting  that  the  judgment  is  a  transition  in 
time,  and  still  holding  that  its  parts  do  not  fall  outside  one 
another  in  time.  His  own  solution  of  the  problem — i.  e.,  that, 
although  judgment  is  an  intellectual  process  in  time,  still  time 
is  not  an  essential  feature  of  it,  because  subject  and  predicate 
are  coexistent  and  judgment  is  a  relation  between  them — 
involves  a  desertion  of  his  dynamic  view  of  judgment.  He 
defines  judgment,  not  as  a  relation  between  subject  and 
predicate,  but  as  an  intellectual  act.1 

i  Of  course,  the  distinction  between  the  process  of  arriving  as  temporal,  and  the 
essential  relation  of  subject  and  predicate  as  eternal,  harks  back  to  the  notion  of 
judgment  as  the  process  by  which  "  we  "  reproduce,  or  make  real  for  ourselves,  a 
reality  already  real  within  itself.  And  it  involves  just  the  same  difficulties.  The 
relation  of  subject  and  predicate  —  this  simultaneous  distinction  and  mutual 
reference  —  has  meaning  only  in  an  act  of  adjustment,  of  attempt  to  control,  within 


BOSANQUET'S  THEOEY  OP  JUDGMENT          123 

4.  The  discussion  of  the  time-element  in  judgment  leads 
up  to  the  next  puzzle  —  that  as  to  the  way  in  which  one 
judgment  can  be  marked  off  from  another  in  the  total  activity 
of  thought.  Bosanquet  has  pointed  out  that  subject  and  pred- 
icate are  both  of  them  present  at  every  stage  of  the  judging 
process,  and  are  undergoing  progressive  modification.  If, 
therefore,  we  take  a  cross-section  of  the  process  at  any  point, 
we  find  both  subject  and  predicate  present;  but  a  cross- 
section  at  one  point  would  not  reveal  quite  the  same  subject 
and  predicate  as  the  cross-section  at  another  point.  He  comes 
to  the  conclusion  that  judgment  breaks  up  into  judgments  as 
rhomboidal  spar  into  rhomboids  (p.  88).  It  is,  accordingly, 
quite  arbitrary  to  mark  out  any  limits  for  a  single  judgment. 
The  illustration  he  gives  of  the  point  is  as  follows: 

Take  such  an  every-day  judgment  of  mixed  perception  and 
inference  as,  "He  is  coming  down  stairs  and  going  into  the 
street."  It  is  the  merest  chance  whether  I  break  up  the  process 
thus,  into  two  judgments  as  united  by  a  mere  conjunction,  or, 
knowing  the  man's  habits,  say,  when  I  hear  him  half  way  down 
stairs,  "  He  is  going  out."  In  the  latter  case  I  summarize  a  more 
various  set  of  observations  and  inferences  in  a  single  judgment;  but 
the  judgment  is  as  truly  single  as  each  of  the  two  which  were  before 
separated-  by  a  conjunction;  for  each  of  them  was  also  a  summary 
of  a  set  of  perceptions,  which  might,  had  I  chosen,  have  been  sub- 
divided into  distinct  propositions  expressing  separate  judgments; 
e.  g.,  "  He  has  opened  his  door,  and  is  going  toward  the  staircase, 

which  we  distribute*  our  conditions.  When  the  act  is  completed,  the  relation 
of  subject  and  predicate,  as  subject  and  predicate,  quite  disappears.  An  eternal 
relation  of  the  two  is  meaningless ;  we  might  as  well  talk  of  an  eternal  reaching 
for  the  same  distant  object  by  the  same  hand.  In  such  conceptions,  we  have  only 
grasped  a  momentary  phase  of  a  situation,  isolated  it,  and  set  it  up  as  an  entity.  Sig- 
nificant results  would  be  reached  by  considering  the  "synthetic"  character  (in  the 
Kantian  sense)  of  judgment  from  this  point  of  view.  All  modern  logicians  agree  that 
judgment  must  be  ampliative,  must  extend  knowledge ;  that  a  "  trifling  proposition  " 
is  no  judgment  at  all.  What  does  this  mean  save  that  judgment  is  developmental, 
transitive,  in  effect  and  purport?  And  yet  these  same  writers  conceive  of  Reality  as 
a  finished  system  of  content  in  a  complete  and  unchangeable  single  Judgment!  It  is 
impossible  to  evade  the  contradiction  save  by  recognizing  that  since  it  is  the  busi- 
ness of  judgment  to  transform,  its  test  (or  Truth)  is  successful  performance  of  the 
particular  transformation  it  has  set  itself,  and  that  transformation  is  temporal. 


124  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

and  is  half  way  down,  and  is  in  the  passage,"  etc.  If  I  simply  say, 
"  He  is  going  out,"  I  am  not  a  whit  the  less  conscious  that  I  judge 
all  these  different  relations,  but  I  then  include  them  all  in  a  single 
systematic  content  "  going  out."  (P.  89.) 

But  is  it  a  question  of  merest  chance  which  of  these 
various  possibilities  is  actualized?  Is  Bosanquet  really 
looking — as  he  thinks — at  the  actual  life  of  thought,  or  is  he 
considering,  not  what  as  a  matter  of  fact  does  take  place  under 
a  concrete  set  of  circumstances,  but  what  might  take  place 
under  slightly  differing  sets  of  circumstances  ?  If  it  is  true 
that  judgment  is  a  crisis  developing  through  adequate  inter- 
action of  stimulus  and  response  into  a  definite  situation, 
beginning  with  doubt  and  ending  with  a  solution  of  the 
doubt,  then  it  is  not  true  that  its  limits  are  purely  arbitrary. 
It  begins  with  the  appearance  of  the  problem  and  its  tenta- 
tive solutions,  and  ends  with  the  solution  of  a  final  response. 
It  does,  of  course,  depend  upon  momentary  interest,  but  this 
does  not  make  its  limits  arbitrary,  for  the  interest  is  inherent, 
not  external.  In  the  case  of  Bosanquet's  illustration,  the 
question  of  whether  one  judgment  or  half  a  dozen  is  made 
is  not  a  question  of  merest  chance.  It  depends  upon  where 
the  interest  of  the  person  making  the  judgment  is  centered 
— in  other  words,  upon  what  is  the  particular  doubt  to  be 
solved.  If  the  real  doubt  is  as  to  whether  the  man  will  stay  in 
his  room  or  go  out,  then  when  he  is  heard  leaving  his  room 
the  solution  comes  in  the  form:  "He  is  going  out."  But  if 
the  doubt  is  as  to  whether  he  will  stay  in  his  room,  go  out,  or 
go  into  some  other  room,  then  the  succession  of  judgments 
occurs,  each  of  which  solves  a  problem.  "He  has  opened 
his  door" — then  he  is  not  going  to  stay  in  his  room;  "He 
is  going  toward  the  staircase" — then  he  is  not  going  into  a 
room  in  the  opposite  direction,  etc.  It  is  impossible  to  con- 
ceive of  such  a  series  of  judgments  as  actually  being  made, 
unless  each  one  represents  a  problematic  situation  and  its 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          125 

determination.  The  only  time  that  a  man  would,  as  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  choose  to  break  up  the  judgment,  "He  is  going 
out,"  into  such  a  series,  would  be  the  time  when  each  mem- 
ber of  the  series  had  its  own  special  interest  as  representing 
a  specific  uncertain  aim  or  problem.  Nor  is  it  altogether 
true  that  in  making  the  judgment,  "He  is  going  out,"  one  is 
not  a  whit  the  less  conscious  that  he  judges  all  these  different 
relations.  He  judges  only  such  relations  as  are  necessary  to 
the  solution  of  the  problem  in  hand.  If  hearing  the  man 
open  his  door  is  a  sufficient  basis  for  the  solution,  then  that 
is  the  only  one  which  consciously  enters  into  the  formation 
of  the  judgment. 

We  have  attempted  to  bring  out  in  the  preceding  pages 
what  seem  to  be  the  contradictions  and  insoluble  problems 
involved  in  Bosanquet's  theory  of  the  judgment,  and  to 
exhibit  them  as  the  logical  outcome  of  his  metaphysical  pre- 
suppositions. We  have  also  tried  to  develop  another  theory 
of  the  judgment  involving  a  different  view  of  the  nature  of 
reality,  and  to  show  that  the  new  theory  is  able  to  avoid 
the  difficulties  inherent  in  Bosanquet's  system.  The  change 
in  view-point  briefly  is  this:  Instead  of  regarding  the  real 
world  as  self-existent,  independently  of  the  judgments  we 
make  about  it,  we  viewed  it  as  the  totality  of  experience 
which  is  assured,  i.  e.,  determined  as  to  certainty  or  specific 
availability,  through  the  instrumentality  of  judgment.  We 
thus  avoided  the  essentially  insoluble  problem  of  how  a 
real  world  whose  content  is  self -existent  quite  outside  of 
knowledge  can  ever  be  correctly  represented  by  ideas.  The 
difficulty  in  understanding  the  relation  of  the  subject  and 
the  predicate  of  judgment  to  reality  disappears  when  we 
cease  to  regard  reality  as  self-existent  outside  of  knowledge. 
Subject  and  predicate  become  instrumentalities  in  the  pro- 
cess of  building  up  reality.  Thought  no  longer  seems  to 
carry  us  farther  and  farther  from  reality  as  ideas  become 


126  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

abstract  and  recede  from  the  immediate  sensory  experience 
in  which  contact  with  the  real  occurs.  On  the  contrary, 
thought  carries  us  constantly  toward  reality.  Finally,  we 
avoid  the  fundamental  skepticism  about  the  possibility  of 
knowledge  which,  from  the  other  standpoint,  is  forced  upon 
us  by  the  long  succession  of  facts  which  have  faded  into  the 
realm  of  false  opinions,  and  the  lack  of  any  guarantee  that 
our  present  so-called  knowledge  of  reality  shall  not  meet  the 
same  fate.  From  that  point  of  view,  reality  seems  to  be  not 
only  unknown,  but  unknowable. 

The  criticism  sure  to  be  passed  upon  the  alternative  view 
developed  is  that  the  solution  of  Bosanquet's  problems 
which  it  affords  is  not  a  real  solution,  but  rather  the  aban- 
donment of  an  attempt 'at  a  solution.  It  represents  reality 
as  a  thing  which  is  itself  in  process  of  development.  It 
would  force  us  to  admit  that  the  reality  of  a  hundred  years 
ago,  or  even  of  yesterday,  was  not  in  content  the  reality  of 
today.  A  growing,  developing  reality  is,  it  will  be  said, 
an  imperfect  reality,  while  we  must  conceive  of  reality  as 
complete  and  perfect  in  itself.  The  only  answer  which  can 
be  made  is  to  insist  again  that  we  have  no  right  to  assume 
that  reality  is  such  an  already  completed  existence,  unless 
such  an  assumption  enables  us  to  understand  experience  and 
organize  it  into  a  consistent  whole.  The  attempt  of  this 
paper  has  been  to  show  that  such  a  conception  of  reality 
really  makes  it  inherently  impossible  to  give  an  intelligible 
account  of  experience  as  a  whole,  while  the  view  which 
regards  reality  as  developing  in  and  through  judgment  does 
enable  us  to  build  up  a  consistent  and  understandable  view 
of  the  world.  This  suggests  that  the  "perfect"  may  not 
after  all  be  that  which  is  finished  and  ended,  but  that  whose 
reality  is  so  abundant  and  vital  as  to  issue  in  continuous 
self -modification.  The  Reality  that  evolves  and  moves  may 
be  more  perfect,  less  finite,  than  that  which  has  exhausted 


BOSANQUET'S  THEORY  OF  JUDGMENT          127 

itself.  Moreover,  only  the  view  that  Reality  is  develop- 
mental in  quality,  and  that  the  instrument  of  its  develop- 
ment is  judgment  involving  the  psychical  in  its  determina- 
tion of  subject  and  predicate  gives  the  psychical  as  such  any 
significant  place  in  knowledge  or  in  reality.  According  to 
the  view  of  knowledge  as  representation  of  an  eternal  con- 
tent, the  psychical  is  a  mere  logical  surd. 


Yt 

TYPICAL  STAGES  IN  THE    DEVELOPMENT  OF  JUDGMENT 

LOGIC  aims  at  investigating  the  general  function  of 
knowing.  But  knowing,  it  is  commonly  asserted,  is  consti- 
tuted as  judgment.  Furthermore,  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  judgment  undergoes  well-marked  changes  in  its  devel- 
opment. Consequently,  an  understanding  of  the  judgment- 
function  and  of  its  epochs  in  development  is  of  prime  impor- 
tance. In  carrying  through  the  investigation  we  shall 
endeavor,  first,  to  state  and  to  defend  a  certain  presupposition 
with  reference  to  the  character  of  the  judgment-function; 
second,  to  exhibit  the  application  of  this  presupposition  in 
the  typical  stages  of  judgment. 


Judgment  is  essentially  instrumental.  This  is  the  pre- 
supposition which  we  must  explain  and  make  good.  And 
we  shall  accomplish  this  by  way  of  an  analysis  of  judgment 
as  meaning. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  what  we  call  knowledge  is  con- 
cerned with  the  discrimination  of  valid  meaning.  To  know 
is  to  appreciate  the  meaning  of  things  and  the  meaning  of 
things  is  the  same  with  valid  meaning.  Judging  determines 
knowledge,  and  in  the  same  act  develops  meaning.  To  put 
it  otherwise,  knowledge  is  a  matter  of  content;  content  is 
meaning,  and  we  have  knowledge  when  we  have  meaning 
satisfactorily  determined.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  if 
we  would  understand  the  judging-function,  we  must  first 
make  clear  to  ourselves  the  nature  and  r6le  of  meaning. 

Meaning  is  universally  embodied  in  ideas.  To  know,  to 

128 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OP  JUDGMENT       129 

understand  the  meaning,  to  get  ideas,  are  the  same.  Now, 
in  ideas  two  factors  may  be  distinguished.  First,  every 
idea  has  as  its  base  an  image  or  emphasized  portion  of 
experience.  In  some  forms  of  ideation  we  are  more  immedi- 
ately aware  of  the  presence  of  images  than  in  others,  but  no 
idea — even  the  most  abstract — can  exist  apart  from  an 
ultimate  base.  Second,  every  idea  is  equally  a  function  of 
reference  and  control.  As  reference,  the  idea  projects  in  the 
mind's  view  an  anticipation  of  experiences  and  of  the  condi- 
tions upon  which  these  experiences  depend  for  their  realiza- 
tion; as  control,  ideas  are  agencies  in  turning  anticipations 
into  realizations.1 

To  be  more  specific  on  both  points:  Since  the  days  of 
Galton  it  has  been  almost  a  commonplace  in  psychology  that 
ideas  are  embodied  in  forms  of  imagery  which  vary  for  and 
in  different  individuals.  It  has  been  maintained,  it  is  true, 
that  in  abstract  forms  of  thought,  imagery  disappears.  This 
objection  is  met  in  two  ways.  For  one,  words — the  vehicle 
of  many  abstract  ideas — involve  imagery  of  a  most  pro- 
nounced type:  for  another,  every  idea,  when  examined 
closely,  discloses  an  image,  no  matter  how  much  for  the  time 
being  this  has  been  driven  into  obscurity  by  the  character- 
istics of  reference  and  control.  Furthermore,  when  we 
examine  the  anticipatory  aspect  of  ideas,  the  presence  of 
imagery  both  with  reference  to  outcome  and  to  conditions  is 
so  evident  that  its  presence  will  scarcely  be  denied. 

The  second  point  may  be  illustrated  in  several  ways.  In 
everyday  life  anticipation  and  realization  are  inseparable 
from  the  nature  and  use  of  ideas.  "Hat"  means  anticipa- 
tion of  protection  to  the  head  and  the  tendency  toward  set- 
ting in  motion  the  conditions  appropriate  to  the  realization 

lit  is  worth  considering  whether  this  may  not  be  the  reality  of  Eoyce's  distinc- 
tion between  outer  and  inner  meaning.  An  anticipation  of  experience  is  the  working 
prerequisite  of  the  control  which  will  realize  the  idea,  i.  e.,  the  experience  antici- 
pated. One  is  no  more  "  inner  "  or  "  outer  "  than  the  other. 


130  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

of  this  anticipation.  The  same  factors  are  evident  in  the 
boy's  definition  of  a  knife  as  "something  to  whittle  with." 
Again  it  is  maintained  that  intelligence  is  an  essential  factor 
in  human  self -consciousness.  By  this  is  meant  that  human 
beings  are  universally  aware  in  some  degree  of  what  they 
are  about.  And  this  awareness  consists  in  understanding 
the  meaning  of  their  actions,  of  forecasting  the  outcome  of 
various  kinds  of  activity,  of  apprehending  beforehand  the 
conditions  connected  with  determinate  results.  Within  this 
sphere  we  speak  of  certain  men  as  being  pre-eminently 
intelligent,  meaning  that  for  such  men  outcomes  are  pre- 
viewed and  connected  with  their  appropriate  conditions  far 
beyond  the  range  of  ordinary  foresight.  Finally,  scientific 
intelligence  is  essentially  of  this  kind.  It  aims  at  under- 
standing the  varying  types  of  process  which  operate  in 
nature  and  thus  at  possessing  itself  of  information  with 
reference  to  results  to  be  expected  under  determinate  con- 
ditions. For  example,  the  knowledge  acquired  in  his 
researches  by  Louis  Pasteur  enabled  him  to  predict  the  life 
or  death  of  animals  inoculated  with  charbon  virus  according 
as  they  had  or  had  not  been  vaccinated  previously.  His 
information,  in  other  words,  became  an  instrument  for  the 
control  and  eradication  of  the  disease.  And  what  is  true  of 
this  case  is  true  of  all  science.  To  the  scientist  ideas  are 
"  working  hypotheses "  and  have  their  value  only  as  they 
enable  him  to  predict,  and  to  control.  And  while  it  is  true 
that  the  scientist  usually  overlooks  the  so-called  practical 
value  of  his  discoveries,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  in  due 
time  the  inventor  follows  the  investigator.  The  investigator 
is  content  to  construct  and  show  the  truth  of  his  idea. 
The  inventor  assumes  the  truth  of  the  investigator's  work 
and  carries  his  idea  as  a  constructive  principle  into  the 
complications  of  life.  To  both  men  "  knowledge  is  power," 
although  the  "power"  may  be  realized  in  connection  with 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OP  JUDGMENT       131 

different  interests.  But  if  this  be  true,  ideas  can  no  longer 
be  regarded  as  copies  in  individual  experience  of  some  pre- 
existing reality.  They  are  rather  instruments  for  transform- 
ing and  directing  experience,  by  way  of  constructing  antici- 
pations and  the  conditions  appropriate  to  their  realization. 
Herein  also  consists  their  truth  or  falsity.  The  true  idea  is 
reliable,  carrying  us  from  anticipation  to  realization;  the 
false  idea  is  unreliable,  and  fails  in  bringing  the  promised 
result. 

Now,  in  the  development  of  instruments  generally,  we 
may  distinguish  a  rule-of- thumb  or  more  or  less  unreflective 
stage  of  construction,  and  one  entirely  reflective.  As  to  use 
there  is  the  distinction  of  inexpert  and  expert  control.  This 
leads  us  to  expect  that  in  the  thought-function  also  certain 
typical  stages  of  construction  and  of  control  may  be  found. 
To  the  investigation  of  this  point  we  shall  next  direct  atten- 
tion. 

II 

In  its  development  from  crude  to  expert  forms  judgment 
exhibits  three  typical  stages — the  impersonal,  the  reflective, 
and  the  intuitive.  These  we  shall  consider  in  order  of 
development.  But  first  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  these  stages 
of  judgment  are  not  to  be  regarded  as  hard  and  fast  distinc- 
tions of  the  kind  that  no  indications  of  the  higher  are  to  be 
found  in  the  lower  types,  but  rather  as  working  distinctions 
within  a  process  of  continuous  development. 

1.  The  impersonal  judgment. — Ever  since  the  days  of  the 
Greek  grammarians  the  impersonal  judgment  has  been  con- 
sidered an  anomaly  in  logic.  And  the  reason  is  not  far  to 
seek.  From  the  time  of  Aristotle  it  has  been  customary  to 
maintain  that  judgments,  when  analyzed,  disclose  a  subject 
and  a  predicate.  Logically  considered,  these  appear  to  be 
entirely  correlative,  for,  as  Erdmann  puts  it,1  "an  event 

iLogik,  p.  304. 


132  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

without  a  substrate,  a  quality  without  a  subject,  is  altogether 
unpresentable."  But  there  is  in  all  languages  a  class  of 
judgments,  such  as,  "It  rains,"  "It  snows,"  "  Fire!"  in  which 
no  directly  asserted  subject  is  discoverable.  To  these  the 
name  impersonal  and  subjectless  has  been  given.  Here  then 
is  the  difficulty.  If  we  admit  that  the  impersonal  expression 
involves  predication,  we  must,  in  all  consistency,  search  for 
a  subject,  while  at  the  same  time  the  subject  refuses  to  dis- 
close itself.  In  ancient  days  the  orthodox  logician  confined 
his  search  to  language  and  to  the  spoken  or  written  proposi- 
tion. The  unorthodox  critic  maintained,  in  opposition  to 
this,  that  a  subject  was  provided  only  by  warping  and  twist- 
ing the  natural  sense  of  the  impersonal  expression.  And 
thus  the  matter  stood  until  the  development  of  modern  com- 
parative philology.  It  was  then  demonstrated  beyond  the 
possibility  of  doubt  that  the  "it"  (or  its  equivalent)  of  the 
impersonal  is  a  purely  contentless  form  word.  Language 
provides  no  subject  whatsoever.  So  strong,  however,  is  the 
hold  of  tradition  that  the  search  has  been  renewed.  Atten- 
tion has  been  turned  upon  the  mental  processes  involved, 
and  this  time  with  more  apparent  result.  Although  there 
has  been  no  general  agreement  with  reference  to  the  subject, 
a  classification  of  the  different  views  may  still  be  made, 
(a)  The*  subject  is  universal  and  undetermined;  (6)  it  is 
individual  and  more  or  less  determined;  (c)  between  these 
extremes  lies  almost  every  intermediate  degree  conceivable. 
Ueberweg  maintains  that  the  subject  of  the  impersonal 
is  the  actual  totality  of  present  experience.  When  we  ask, 
"What  rains?"  we  must  understand  a  reference  to  our  general 
environment,  in  which  no  special  element  is  singled  out. 
Sigwart,  on  the  other  hand,  maintains  that  the  subject  can 
be  construed  only  as  the  actual  sense-impression.  This 
diversity  of  opinion  might  seem  to  indicate  that,  were  it  not 
for  the  constraining  power  of  theory,  a  subject  would  scarcely 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OF  JUDGMENT       133 

be  thought  of  for  the  impersonal.  Still  it  must  be  admitted 
that  when  we  examine  the  impersonal  expression  closely  we 
can  discover  a  sense-impression,  whether  definite  or  indefi- 
nite, combined  with  an  idea.  This  would  seem  to  give  the 
case  to  the  orthodox  logician,  for  he  will  at  once  claim  the 
sense-impression  as  the  subject  and  the  idea  as  the  predicate 
of  the  judgment.  But  we  must  have  a  care.  Predication  is 
usually  held  to  consist  in  a  reference  of  predicate  to  subject. 
The  factors  of  the  judgment  are,  as  it  were,  held  apart.  In 
the  impersonal  no  such  thing  as  this  can  be  discovered.  The 
meaning  is  so  close  a  unity  that  impression  and  idea  are 
entirely  fused.  We  may  analyze  the  expression  and  find 
them  there,  but  by  so  doing  we  destroy  the  immediacy  which 
is  an  essential  characteristic  of  the  impersonal.  In  other 
words,  the  impersonal  does  not  analyze  itself.  It  is  entirely 
unconscious  of  its  make-up.  And  yet  it  is  definite  and 
applies  itself  with  precision:  If  I  am  in  a  lecture-hall  and 
hear  the  fire-alarm,  the  thought  "Fire!"  which  enters  my 
mind  leads  to  an  immediate  change  in  my  conduct.  I  arise, 
move  quietly  out,  and  prepare  for  duty.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  I  open  the  street  door  and  the  rain  strikes  my  face,  I 
ejaculate  "Raining!"  turn,  reach  for  my  umbrella,  and  pass 
out  protected.  In  both  cases  I  act  knowingly  and  with 
meaning,  but  I  do  not  analyze  the  movement  either  of  thought 
or  of  action.  A  correlate  to  the  unreflective  impersonal  judg- 
ment is  found  in  early  custom.  Custom  embodies  social 
ideas  and  is  an  instrument  for  the  determination  and  control 
of  action.  Individuals  moved  by  custom  know  what  they 
are  about  and  act  with  precision  according  as  custom  may 
demand.  But  it  is  notorious  that  custom  is  direct  and  unre- 
flective. It  represents  social  instruments  of  control  which 
have  grown  up  without  method  and  which  represent  the 
slow  accretion  of  rule-of-thumb  activities  through  many 
ages.  So  in  the  impersonal  judgment  we  have  a  type  of 


134  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

intellectual  instrument  which  has  been  brought  to  a  high 
degree  of  precision  in  use,  but  which  still  retains  the  sim- 
plicity and  certainty  of  an  unquestioned  instrument  of  action. 
For  this  reason,  whatever  complexity  of  elements  the  imper- 
sonal may  present  to  a  reflective  view,  it  does  not  contain  to 
itself.  Consequently  it  may  be  best  to  say  that  to  the  imper- 
sonal there  is  neither  subject,  predicate,  nor  reference  of  the 
one  to  the  other.  These  are  distinctions  which  arise  only 
when  the  instrument  of  action  has  been  questioned  and  the 
mind  turns  back  upon  the  meaning  which  it  has  unhesita- 
tingly used,  analyzing,  investigating,  constructing,  laying 
bare  the  method  and  function  of  its  tools.  Thus  arises  a 
new  and  distinctive  type  of  judgment,  viz.,  the  reflective. 

2.  The  reflective  judgment. — By  the  reflective  judgment 
is  to  be  understood  that  form  of  meaning  whose  structure 
and  function  have  become  a  problem  to  itself.  The  days  of 
naive  trust  and  spontaneous  action  have  gone  by.  Inquiry, 
criticism,  aloofness,  stay  the  tendency  to  immediate  action. 
Meaning  has  grown  worldly  wise  and  demands  that  each 
situation  shall  explain  itself  and  that  the  general  principles 
and  concrete  applications  of  its  own  instruments  shall  be 
made  manifest.  Hence  in  the  various  forms  of  reflective 
thought  we  find  the  progressive  steps  in  which  meaning 
comes  to  full  consciousness  of  its  function  in  experience. 

The  demonstrative  judgment  (the  simplest  of  the  reflective 
type)  carries  doubt,  criticism,  construction,  and  assertion 
written  on  the  face  of  it.  For  example,  in  the  expression, 
"  That  is  hot,"  we  do  not  find  the  directness  and  immediacy 
of  response  characteristic  of  the  simpler  impersonal  "hot." 
Instead,  we  note  a  clash  of  tendencies,  a  suspension  of  the 
proposed  action,  a  demand  for  and  a  carrying  out  of  a  recon- 
sideration of  the  course  of  action,  the  emergence  of  a  new 
meaning,  and  the  consequent  redirection  of  activities.  An 
iron  lies  upon  the  hearth ;  I  stretch  out  my  hand  to  return  it 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OF  JUDGMENT       135 

to  its  place;  I  stop  suddenly,  having  become  conscious  of 
signs  of  warmth ;  the  thought  arises  in  ray  mind,  "  That  is 
hot;"  I  experiment  and  find  my  judgment  correct;  I  search 
for  a  cloth,  and  thus  protected  carry  out  my  first  intention. 
Again,  a  hunter  notes  a  movement  in  the  thicket,  quickly 
raises  his  gun,  and  is  about  to  fire.  Something  in  the 
movement  of  the  object  arrests  him.  He  stops,  thinking, 
"That  is  a  man,  perhaps."  What  has  caught  the  eye  has 
arrested  his  action,  has  become  a  demand,  and  not  until 
the  situation  has  become  clear  can  the  hunter  determine 
what  to  do.  In  other  words,  he  must  reflectively  assure 
himself  what  the  object  is  before  he  can  satisfy  himself  as  to 
how  he  should  act.  Subject  and  predicate  have  arisen  and 
have  consciously  played  their  parts  in  the  passage  from 
doubt  to  decision. 

Under  the  heading  "  individual  judgments  "  are  classed 
such  expressions  as,  "That  ship  is  a  man-o'-war,"  "Kussia 
opposes  the  policy  of  the  open  door  in  China."  In  both 
these  cases  it  is  evident  that  an  advance  in  definiteness  of 
conception  and  of  complexity  of  meaning  has  been  made, 
while  at  the  same  time  we  recognize  that  the  instrumental 
characteristics  of  the  thought-movement  remain  the  same. 
In  considering  the  subject  of  the  judgment  we  note  that  the 
stimulus  presents  itself  partly  as  a  determinate  factor  and 
partly  as  a  problem — an  insistent  demand.  The  expression, 
"  That  ship  is  a  man-o'-war,"  might  be  written,  "  That  is  a 
ship  and  of  the  kind  man-o'-war,"  and  it  thus  constitutes 
what  Sigwart  calls  a  "  double  synthesis."  As  used  in  actual 
judgment,  however,  the  two  are  held  together  and  constitute 
the  statement  of  a  single  stimulus  of  which  a  certain  portion 
is  evident  and  a  certain  portion  is  in  doubt.  The  working 
out  of  the  difficulty  is  given  in  the  predicate  "  is  a  man-o'- 
war,"  in  which  we  at  once  detect  the  instrumental  character- 
istics fundamental  to  all  judgment.  To  illustrate:  At  the 


136  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

close  of  the  battle  of  Santiago,  in  the  Spanish -American 
war,  smoke  appeared  upon  the  horizon  revealing  the  presence 
of  a  strange  ship.  Instantly  attention  was  directed  to  it, 
and  it  became  a  problem  for  action — a  demand  for  instru- 
mental information.  Soon  it  was  identified  as  a  man-o'-war, 
and  the  American  ships  were  cleared  for  action.  Closer 
approach  raised  a  further  question  with  reference  to  its 
nationality.  After  some  debate  this  also  was  resolved,  and 
hostile  demonstrations  were  abandoned. 

The  universal  judgment  is  sometimes  said  to  exhibit  two 
distinct  forms.  Investigation,  however,  has  proved  this 
statement  to  be  incorrect.  Instances  taken  in  themselves 
and  apart  from  their  character  are  of  no  logical  significance. 
Advance  is  made  by  weighing  instances  and  not  by  counting 
them.  In  short,  the  true  universal  is  the  hypothetical  judg- 
ment, and  the  reason  for  this  may  be  readily  shown.  The 
hypothetical  judgment  is  essentially  double-ended.  On  the 
one  hand,  it  is  a  statement  of  the  problem  of  action  in  terms 
of  the  conditions  which  will  turn  the  problem  into  a  solution. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  an  assertion  that  once  the  conditions 
of  action  have  been  determined  the  result  desired  may  be 
attained.  Here  we  note  that  the  judgment  has  come  to  clear 
consciousness  of  itself  and  of  the  part  which  it  plays  in 
experience.  It  has  now  obtained  an  insight  into  the  crite- 
rion of  its  legitimate  employment,  i.  e.,  of  its  truth  and 
falsity.  And  this  insight  makes  the  justification  of  its  claim 
almost  self-evident.  For,  inasmuch  as  the  hypothetical  judg- 
ment says,  "  If  such  and  such  conditions  be  realized,  such 
and  such  a  result  will  be  obtained,"  the  test  of  the  claim  is 
made  by  putting  the  conditions  into  effect  and  watching 
whether  the  promised  experience  is  given.  And  further, 
since  it  has  been  found  that  the  judgment  formulated  as  a 
hypothesis  actually  accomplishes  what  it  promises,  we  must 
admit  that  the  hypothetical  judgment  is  also  categorical. 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OF  JUDGMENT      137 

These  two  factors  cannot  be  separated  from  each  other.  It 
is  true  that  the  hypothetical  judgment  reduces  every  valid 
meaning  to  the  form,  \l  If  certain  conditions  be  realized," 
but  it  as  plainly  and  positively  asserts,  "such  and  such 
results  will  be  obtained."  When  we  grasp  the  absolute  cor- 
relativity  of  the  hypothetical  and  categorical  aspects  of 
judgment,  we  realize  at  once  the  essentially  instrumental 
character  of  judgment,  when  it  comes  to  consciousness  of  its 
structure  and  function.  It  arises  in  the  self-conscious  reali- 
zation of  a  problem.  This  it  reflects  upon  and  sizes  up. 
When  the  difficulty  has  been  apprehended,  the  judgment 
emerges  as  the  consciousness  of  the  conditions  which  will 
attain  the  desired  end  of  action  freed  and  unimpeded.  This 
may  be  illustrated  by  reference  to  the  work  of  Pasteur  cited 
above.  His  investigations  began  in  a  problem  set  for  him 
by  agricultural  conditions  in  France.  A  certain  disease  had 
made  the  profitable  rearing  of  sheep  and  cattle  almost  an 
impossibility.  After  long  and  careful  examination  he  dis- 
covered the  beneficial  effects  of  vaccination.  To  him  the 
conditions  which  governed  the  presence  of  the  disease  became 
apparent,  and  this  knowledge  furnished  him  with  an  instru- 
ment by  means  of  which  one  difficulty  was  removed  from  the 
path  of  the  stock-raiser.  In  this  illustration  we  have  an 
epitome  of  the  work  accomplished  everywhere  by  the  scien- 
tist. It  is  his  task  to  develop  and  to  reduce  to  exact  terms 
instruments  of  control  for  the  varied  activities  of  life.  In 
its  parts  and  as  a  whole  each  instrument  is  intelligently  con- 
structed and  tested  so  that  its  make-up  and  function  are  exactly 
known.  Because  of  this,  reasoned  belief  now  takes  the  place 
of  unreflective  trust  as  that  was  experienced  in  the  impersonal 
stage  of  judgment.  What  at  first  hand  might  appear  to  be 
a  loss  was  in  reality  a  gain ;  the  breakdown  of  the  impersonal 
was  the  first  step  in  the  development  of  an  instrument  of 
action  conscious  of  its  reason  for  being,  its  methods  and 


138  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

conditions  of  action.  These  latter  constitute  the  distinctive 
subject  and  predicate  of  the  reflective  judgment. 

This  brings  us  to  the  connection  between  the  hypotheti- 
cal character  of  this  form  of  judgment  and  its  universality. 
And  this  perhaps  will  now  be  quite  apparent.  The  reflect- 
ive judgment  lays  bare  an  objective  connection  between  the 
conditions  and  outcomes  of  actions.  It  proves  its  point  by 
actually  constructing  the  event.  Such  being  the  case,  uni- 
versality is  no  more  than  a  statement  of  identical  results 
being  predictable  wherever  like  conditions  are  realized.  If 
it  be  true  that  "man  is  mortal,"  then  it  is  an  identical  state- 
ment to  insist  that,  "  Wherever  we  find  men  there  we  shall 
also  find  mortality." 

And  this  point  brings  us  naturally  to  the  treatment  of 
the  disjunctive  judgment:  "A  is  either  B  or  C  or  D."  In  the 
disjunctive  judgment  the  demand  is  not  for  the  construction 
of  a  reliable  instrument  of  action,  but  for  the  resolution  of  a 
doubt  as  to  which  instrument  is  precisely  fitted  to  the  cir- 
cumstances. In  fact,  the  disjunctive  judgment  involves  the 
identification  of  the  practical  problem.  When  we  say  of  a 
man,  "He  is  either  very  simple  or  very  deep,"  we  have  no 
doubt  as  to  our  proper  course  of  action  in  either  case.  If  he 
is  simple^  then  we  shall  do  so  and  so;  if  he  is  deep,  then 
another  course  of  action  follows.  We  can  lay  out  alternative 
courses  beforehand,  but  the  point  of  difficulty  lies  here:  "But 
just  which  is  he?"  In  short,  the  disjunctive  judgment  is 
the  demand  for  and  the  attempt  at  a  precise  diagnosis  of  a 
concrete  problem.  To  illustrate:  A  patient  afflicted  with 
aphasia  is  brought  to  a  physician.  The  fact  that  the  trouble 
is  aphasia  may  be  quite  evident.  But  what  precisely  is  the 
form  and  seat  of  the  aphasia?  To  the  mind  of  the  educated 
physician  the  problem  will  take  on  the  disjunctive  form: 
"  This  is  either  subcortical  or  cortical  aphasia.  If  subcor- 
tical,  intelligence  will  not  be  impaired ;  if  cortical,  the  sensor 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OF  JUDGMENT       139 

and  motor  tracts  will  be  in  good  condition."  Appropriate 
tests  are  made  and  the  subcortical  possibilities  are  shut  out. 
The  disjunction  disappears  and  the  judgment  emerges:  "This 
is  a  case  of  cortical  aphasia.  But  now  a  new  disjunction 
arises.  It  is  either  the  sensory  or  motor  form  of  cortical 
aphasia,  and,  whichever  one  of  these,  it  is  again  one  of  several 
possibilities.  As  the  alternatives  arise,  the  means  for  dis- 
criminating them  arise  also;  determinate  symptoms  are 
observed,  and  in  due  time  the  physician  arrives  at  the  final 
conclusion:  "This  is  sensory  cortical  aphasia  of  the  visual 
type."  Having  determined  this,  his  method  of  action  is 
assured,  and  he  proceeds  to  the  appropriate  operation.  Thus, 
finally,  we  are  brought  to  a  form  of  judgment  aware  not 
only  of  its  motive,  method,  and  justification,  but  also  to  one 
aware  of  its  specific  application  to  individual  cases.  Thus  it 
would  seem  as  though  judgment  had  returned  upon  itself 
and  had  completed  the  determination  of  its  sphere  of  action. 
And  in  one  sense  this  is  true.  In  the  disjunctive  judgment, 
as  inclusive  of  the  motives  of  the  hypothetical  and  categori- 
cal forms,  the  reflective  judgment  would  appear  to  have  come 
to  its  limit  of  development.  One  thing,  however,  remains 
to  be  considered,  viz.,  the  development  from  crude  to  expert 
uses  of  intellectual  instruments. 

3.  The  intuitive  judgment. — As  stated  above,  the  intuitive 
type  of  judgment  depends  upon  efficiency  in  the  use  of  judg- 
ment. In  this  regard  there  is  a  great  similarity  between 
the  impersonal  and  the  intuitive  judgments.  Both  are 
immediate  and  precise.  But  there  is  a  radical  and  essential 
difference.  The  impersonal  judgment  knows  nothing  of  the 
strict  analysis,  insight,  and  constructive  power  of  the  reflect- 
ive judgment.  The  intuitive  judgment,  on  the  other  hand, 
includes  the  results  of  reflection  and  brings  them  to  their 
highest  power.  Paradoxically  put,  in  the  intuitive  judg- 
ment there  is  so  much  reflection  that  there  is  no  need  for 


140  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

it  at  all.  To  the  intuitive  judgment  there  is  no  hesitation, 
no  aloofness.  Action  is  direct,  but  entirely  self-conscious. 
That  such  a  type  of  judgment  as  the  intuitive  exists  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  There  is  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
between  the  quality  of  consciousness  of  a  mere  layman  and 
that  of  an  expert,  no  matter  what  the  line.  The  layman 
must  size  up  a  situation.  It  is  a  process  whose  parts  are 
successive,  whether  much  or  little  difficulty  be  experienced. 
For  the  expert  situations  are  taken  in  at  a  glance,  parts  and 
whole  are  simultaneous  and  immediate.  Yet  the  meaning  is 
entirely  exact.  The  expert  judgment  is  self-conscious  to  the 
last  degree.  While  other  individuals  are  thinking  out  what 
to  do,  the  expert  has  it,  sees  the  advantage,  adjusts,  and 
moves.  Demand  and  solution  jump  together.  How  other- 
wise can  we  explain,  for  example,  the  action  of  an  expert 
ball-player?  Witness  his  rapid  reactions,  his  instantaneous 
adjustments.  Mistakes  of  opponents  which  would  never  be 
noticed  by  the  average  player  are  recognized  and  seized 
upon.  On  the  instant  the  new  opening  is  seen,  the  adjust- 
ment is  evident,  the  movement  made.  Illustrations  to  the 
same  effect  could  be  drawn  from  other  modes  of  life,  e.  g., 
music,  the  military  life,  etc.  That  intuitive  judgments  are 
not  more  .common  is  a  proof  in  itself  of  their  distinctive 
character  and  value.  Only  in  so  far  as  we  become  experts 
in  our  special  fields  of  experience  and  have  reduced  our 
instruments  of  action  to  precise  control,  can  we  expect  the 
presence  of  intuitive  judgments.  They  remain,  therefore,  as 
the  final  outcome  of  the  judgment-function  made  perfect  in 
its  technique  and  use. 

In  conclusion  we  shall  make  a  brief  summary  of  our 
investigation  and  a  criticism  of  certain  current  theories  of 
judgment. 

Judgment  is  essentially  instrumental.  Its  function  is  to 
construct,  justify,  and  refine  experience  into  exact  instruments 


STAGES  IN  DEVELOPMENT  OF  JUDGMENT       141 

for  the  direction  and  control  of  future  experience  through 
action.  It  exhibits  itself  first  in  the  form  of  instruments 
developed  unsystematically  in  response  to  the  hard  neces- 
sities of  life.  In  a  higher  stage  of  development  the  instru- 
mental process  itself  is  taken  into  account,  and  systematically 
developed  until  in  the  methodical  procedure  of  science  the 
general  principles  of  knowledge  are  laid  bare  and  efficient 
instruments  of  action  constructed.  Finally,  constant,  intel- 
ligent use  results  in  complete  control,  so  that  within  certain 
spheres  doubt  and  hesitancy  would  seem  to  disappear  as 
to  the  character  of  the  tools  used,  and  remain  only  as  a 
moment  in  determining  their  wisest  or  most  appropriate 
employ. 

The  criticism  indicated  is  based  upon  the  instrumental 
character  of  judgment  and  is  directed  against  all  theories 
which  contend  that  knowledge  is  a  "copying"  or  "reprodu- 
cing" of  reality.  In  whatever  form  this  "copy"  theory  be 
stated,  the  question  inevitably  arises  how  we  can  compare 
our  ideas  with  reality  and  thus  know  their  truth.  On  this 
theory,  what  we  posse'ss  is  ever  the  copy;  the  reality  is 
beyond.  In  other  words,  such  a  theory  logically  carried 
out  leads  to  the  breakdown  of  knowledge.  Only  a  theory 
which  contains  and  constructs  its  criterion  within  its  own 
specific  movement  can  verify  its  constructions.  Such  a 
theory  is  the  instrumental.  Judgment  constructs  a  situation 
in  consciousness.  The  values  assigned  in  this  situation  have 
a  determining  influence  upon  values  further  appreciated. 
The  construction  arrived  at  concerns  future  weal  and  woe. 
Thus  gradually  a  sense  of  truth  and  falsity  attaches  to  the 
construing  of  situations.  One  sees  that  he  must  look  beyond 
this  situation,  because  the  way  he  estimates  this  situation  is 
fraught  with  meaning  beyond  itself.  Hence  the  critically 
reflective  judgment  in  which  hesitancy  and  doubt  direct 
themselves  at  the  attitude,  elements,  and  tools  involved  in 


142  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

defining  and  identifying  the  situation,  instead  of  at  the  situa- 
tion itself  in  toto.  Instead  of  developing  a  complex  of 
experience  through  assigning  qualities  and  meanings  to  the 
situation  as  such,  some  one  of  the  quales  is  selected,  to  have 
its  significance  determined.  It  becomes,  pro  tempore,  the 
situation  judged.  Or  the  same  thing  takes  place  as  regards 
some  "idea"  or  value  hitherto  immediately  fastened  upon 
and  employed.  In  either  case  we  get  the  reflective  judg- 
ment, the  judgment  of  pure  relationship  as  distinct  from 
the  constructive  judgment.  But  the  judgment  of  relation, 
employing  the  copula  to  refer  a  specified  predicate  to  a  speci- 
fied object,  is  after  all  only  for  the  sake  of  controlling  some 
immediate  judgment  of  constructive  experience.  It  realizes 
itself  in  forming  the  confident  habit  of  prompt  and  precise 
mental  adjustment  to  individualized  situations. 


VII 

THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS 

IN  the  various  discussions  of  the  hypothesis  which  have 
appeared  in  works  on  inductive  logic  and  in  writings  on 
scientific  method,  its  structure  and  function  have  received 
considerable  attention,  while  its  origin  has  been  conrpara- 
tively  neglected.  The  hypothesis  has  generally  been  treated 
as  that  part  of  scientific  procedure  which  marks  the  stage 
where  a  definite  plan  or  method  is  proposed  for  dealing  with 
new  or  unexplained  facts.  It  is  regarded  as  an  invention 
for  the  purpose  of  explaining  the  given,  as  a  definite  con- 
jecture which  is  to  be  tested  by  an  appeal  to  experience  to 
e  whether  deductions  made  in  accordance  with  it  will  be 
ound  true  in  fact.  The  function  of  the  hypothesis  is  to 
unify,  to  furnish  a  method  of  dealing  with  things,  and  its 
structure  must  be  suitable  to  this  end.  It  must  be  so 
formed  that  it  will  be  likely  to  prove  valid,  and  writers 
have  formulated  various  rules  to  be  followed  in  the  forma- 
tion of  hypotheses.  These  rules  state  the  main  require- 
ments of  a  good  hypothesis,  and  are  intended  to  aid  in  a 
general  way  by  pointing  out  certain  limits  within  which  it 
must  fall. 

In  respect  to  the  origin  of  the  hypothesis,  writers  have 
usually  contented  themselves  with  pointing  out  the  kind  of 
situations  in  which  hypotheses  are  likely  to  appear.  But 
after  this  has  been  done,  after  favorable  external  conditions 
have  been  given,  the  rest  must  be  left  to  "genius,"  for 
hypotheses  arise  as  "happy  guesses,"  for  which  no  rule  or 
law  can  be  given.  In  fact,  the  genius  differs  from  the 
ordinary  plodding  mortal  in  just  this  ability  to  form  fruitful 

143 


'. 


144  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

hypotheses  in  the  midst  of  the  same  facts  which  to  other  less 
gifted  individuals  remain  only  so  many  disconnected  expe- 
riences. 

This  unequal  stress  which  has  been  laid  on  the  structure 
and  function  of  the  hypothesis  in  comparison  with  its  origin 
may  be  attributed  to  three  reasons:  (1)  The  facts,  or  data, 
which  constitute  the  working  material  of  hypotheses  are 
regarded  as  given  to  all  alike,  and  all  alike  are  more  or  less 
interested  in  systematizing  and  unifying  experience.  The 
purpose  of  the  hypothesis  and  the  opportunity  for  forming  it 
are  thus  practically  the  same  for  all,  and  hence  certain  defi- 
nite rules  can  be  laid  down  which  will  apply  to  all  cases 
where  hypotheses  are  to  be  employed.  (2)  But  beyond  this 
there  seems  to  be  no  clue -that  can  be  formulated.  There  is 
apparently  a  more  or  less  open  acceptance  of  the  final  answer 
of  the  boy  Zerah  Colburn,  who,  when  pressed  to  give  an 
explanation  of  his  method  of  instantaneous  calculation,  ex- 
claimed in  despair:  "Grod  put  it  into  my  head,  and  I  can't 
put  it  into  yours." l  (3)  And,  furthermore,  there  is  very  often 
a  strong  tendency  to  disregard  investigation  into  the  origin 
of  that  which  is  taken  as  given,  for,  since  it  is  already 
present,  its  origin,  whatever  it  may  have  been,  can  have 
nothing  to  do  with  what  it  is  now.  The  facts,  the  data, 
are  here,  and  must  be  dealt  with  as  they  are.  Their  past, 
their  history  or  development,  is  entirely  irrelevant.  So, 
even  if  we  could  trace  the  hypothesis  farther  back  on  the 
psychological  side,  the  investigation  would  be  useless,  for 
the  rules  to  which  a  good  hypothesis  must  conform  would 
remain  the  same. 

Whether  or  not  it  can  be  shown  that  Zerah  Colburn's 
ultimate  explanation  is  needed  in  logic  as  little  as  Laplace 
asserted  a  similar  one  to  be  required  in  his  celestial  me- 

i  DE  MORGAN,  Budget  of  Paradoxes,  pp.  55,  56 ;  quoted  by  WELTON,  Logic,  Vol. 
II,  p.  60. 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  145 

chanics,  it  may  at  least  be  possible  to  defer  it  to  some  extent 
by  means  of  a  further  psychological  inquiry.  It  will  be 
found  that  psychological  inquiry  into  the  origin  of  the 
hypothesis  is  not  irrelevant  in  respect  to  an  understanding 
of  its  structure  and  function ;  for  origin  and  function  can- 
not be  understood  apart  from  each  other,  and,  since  struc- 
ture must  be  adapted  to  function,  it  cannot  be  independent 
of  origin.  In  fact,  origin,  structure,  and  function  are  organ- 
ically connected,  and  each  loses  its  meaning  when  absolutely 
separated  from  each  other.  It  will  be  found,  moreover,  that 
the  data  which  are  commonly  taken  as  the  given  material 
are  not  something  to  which  the  hypothesis  is  subsequently 
applied,  but  that,  instead  of  this  external  relation  between 
data  and  hypothesis,  the  hypothesis  exercises  a  directive  func- 
tion in  determining  what  are  the  data.  In  a  word,  the  main 
object  of  this  discussion  will  be  to  contend  against  making 
a  merely  convenient  and  special  way  of  regarding  the 
hypothesis  a  full  and  adequate  one.  Though  we  speak  of 
facts  and  of  hypotheses  that  may  be  applied  to  them,  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  there  are  no  facts  which  remain 
the  same  whatever  hypothesis  be  applied  to  them;  and  that 
there  are  no  hypotheses  which  are  hypotheses  at  all  except 
in  reference  to  their  function  in  dealing  with  our  subject- 
matter  in  such  a  way  as  to  facilitate  its  factual  apprehension. 
Data  are  selected  in  order  to  be  determined,  and  hypotheses 
are  the  ways  in  which  this  determination  is  carried  on.  If, 
as  we  shall  attempt  to  show,  the  relation  between  data  and 
hypothesis  is  not  external,  but  strictly  correlative,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  this  fact  must  be  taken  into  account  in  questions 
concerning  deduction  and  induction,  analytic  and  synthetic 
judgments,  and  the  criterion  of  truth.  Its  bearing  must  be 
recognized  in  the  investigation  of  metaphysical  problems  as 
well,  for  reality  cannot  be  independent  of  the  knowing 
process.  In  a  word,  the  purpose  of  this  discussion  of  the 


146  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

hypothesis  is  to  determine  its  nature  a  little  more  precisely 
through  an  investigation  of  its  rather  obscure  origin,  and  to 
call  attention  to  certain  features  of  its  function  which  have 
not  generally  been  accorded  their  due  significance. 


The  hypothesis  as  predicate. — It  is  generally  admitted 
that  the  function  of  the  hypothesis  is  to  provide  a  way  of 
dealing  with  the  data  or  subject-matter  which  we  need  to 
organize.  In  this  use  of  the  hypothesis  it  appears  in  the 
r6le  of  predicate  in  a  judgment  of  which  the  data,  or  facts, 
to  be  construed  constitute  the  subject. 

In  his  attempts  to  reduce  the  movements  of  the  planets 
about  the  sun  to  some  -general  formula,  Kepler  finally  hit 
upon  the  law  since  known  as  Kepler's  law,  viz.,  that  the 
squares  of  the  periodic  times  of  the  several  planets  are  pro- 
portional to  the  cubes  of  their  mean  distances  from  the  sun. 
This  law  was  first  tentatively  advanced  as  a  hypothesis. 
Kepler  was  not  certain  of  its  truth  till  it  had  proved  its 
claim  to  acceptance.  Neither  did  Newton  have  at  first  any 
great  degree  of  assurance  in  regard  to  his  law  of  gravitation, 
and  was  ready  to  give  it  up  when  he  failed  in  his  first  attempt 
to  test  it  by  observation  of  the  moon.  And  the  same  thing 
may  be  sa*id  about  the  caution  of  Darwin  and  other  investi- 
gators in  regard  to  accepting  hypotheses.  The  only  reason 
for  their  extreme  care  in  not  accepting  at  once  their  tentative 
formulations  or  suggestions  was  the  fear  that  some  other 
explanation  might  be  the  correct  one.  This  rejection  of 
other  possibilities  is  the  negative  side  of  the  matter.  We 
become  confident  that  our  hypothesis  is  the  right  one  as  we 
lose  confidence  in  other  possible  explanations ;  and  it  might 
be  added,  without  falling  into  a  circle,  that  we  lose  confidence 
in  the  other  possibilities  as  we  become  more  convinced  of 
our  hypothesis. 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  147 

It  appears  that  such  may  be  the  relation  of  the  positive 
and  negative  sides  in  case  of  snch  elaborate  hypotheses  as 
those  of  Kepler  and  Newton;  but  is  it  true  where  our 
hypotheses  are  more  simple?  It  is  not  easy  to  understand 
why  the  fact  that  the  hypothesis  is  more  simple,  and  the 
time  required  for  its  formulation  and  test  a  good  deal 
shorter,  should  materially  change  the  state  of  affairs.  The 
question  remains:  Why,  if  there  is  no  opposition,  should 
there  be  any  uncertainty  ?  In  all  instances,  then,  the  hypothe- 
sis appears  as  one  among  other  possible  predicates  which 
may  be  applied  to  our  data  taken  as  subject-matter  of  a 
judgment. 

The  predicate  as  hypothesis. — Suppose,  then,  the 
hypothesis  is  a  predicate;  is  the  predicate  necessarily  a 
hypothesis?  This  is  the  next  question  we  are  called  upon 
to  answer,  and,  since  the  predicate  cannot  very  well  be  taken 
aside  from  the  judgment,  our  question  involves  the  nature 
of  the  judgment. 

While  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  give  a  very  complete 
account  of  the  various  definitions  of  the  judgment  that  might 
be  adduced,  still  the  mention  of  a  few  of  the  more  prominent 
ones  may  serve  to  indicate  that  something  further  is  needed. 
In  definitions  of  the  judgment  sometimes  the  subjective  side 
is  emphasized,  sometimes  the  objective  side,  and  in  other 
instances  there  are  attempts  to  combine  the  two.  For 
instance,  Lotze  regards  the  judgment  as  the  idea  of  a  unity 
or  relation  between  two  concepts,  with  the  further  implica- 
tion that  this  connection  holds  true  of  the  object  referred 
to.  J.  S.  Mill  says  that  every  proposition  either  affirms  or 
denies  existence,  coexistence,  sequence,  causation,  or  resem- 
blance. Trendelenburg  regards  the  judgment  as  a  form  of 
thought  which  corresponds  to  the  real  connection  of  things, 
while  Ueberweg  states  the  case  a  little  differently,  and  says 
that  the  essence  of  judgment  consists  in  recognizing  the 


148  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

objective  validity  of  a  subjective  connection  of  ideas.  Royce 
points  to  a  process  of  imitation  and  holds  that  in  the  judg- 
ment we  try  to  portray  by  means  of  the  ideas  that  enter  into 
it.  Ideas  are  imitative  in  their  nature.  Sigwart's  view  of 
the  judgment  is  that  in  it  we  say  something  about  some- 
thing. With  him  the  judgment  is  a  synthetic  process,  while 
Wundt  considers  its  nature  analytic  and  holds  that,  instead 
of  uniting,  or  combining,  concepts  into  a  whole,  it  separates 
them  out  of  a  total  idea  or  presentation.  Instead  of  blend- 
ing parts  into  a  whole,  it  separates  the  whole  into  its  con- 
stituent parts.  Bradley  and  Bosanquet  both  hold  that  in 
the  judgment  an  ideal  content  comes  into  relation  with 
reality.  Bradley  says  that  in  every  judgment  reality  is 
qualified  by  an  idea,  which  is  symbolic.  The  ideal  content 
is  recognized  as  such,  and  is  referred  to  a  reality  beyond  the 
act.  This  is  the  essence  of  judgment.  Bosanquet  seems 
to  perceive  a  closer  relation  between  idea  and  reality,  for 
although  he  says  that  judgment  is  the  "intellectual  function 
which  defines  reality  by  significant  ideas,"  he  also  tells  us 
that  "the  subject  is  both  in  and  out  of  the  judgment,  as 
Reality  is  both  in  and  out  of  my  consciousness." 

In  all  these  definitions  of  judgment  the  predicate  appears 
as  ideal.  An  ideal  content  is  predicated  of  something, 
whether*we  regard  this  something  as  an  idea  or  as  reality 
beyond,  or  as  reality  partly  within  and  partly  without  the 
act  of  judging ;  and  it  is  ideal  whether  we  consider  it  as  one 
of  the  three  parts  into  which  judgments  are  usually  divided, 
or  whether  we  say,  with  Bosanquet  and  Bradley,  that  sub- 
ject, predicate,  and  copula  all  taken  together  form  a  single 
ideal  content,  which  is  somehow  applied  to  reality.  More- 
over, we  not  only  judge  about  reality,  but  it  seems  to  be 
quite  immaterial  to  reality  whether  we  judge  concerning  it 
or  not. 

Many  of  our  judgments  prove  false.     Not  only  do  we  err 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  149 

in  our  judgments,  but  we  often  hesitate  in  making  them  for 
fear  of  being  wrong;  we  feel  there  are  other  possibilities, 
and  our  predication  becomes  tentative.  Here  we  have  some- 
thing very  like  the  hypothesis,  for  our  ideal  content  shows 
itself  to  be  a  tentative  attempt  in  the  presence  of  alterna- 
tives to  qualify  and  systematize  reality.  It  appears,  then, 
on  the  basis  of  the  views  of  the  judgment  that  have  been 
mentioned,  that  not  only  do  we  find  the  hypothesis  taking 
its  place  as  the  predicate  of  a  judgment,  but  the  predicate  is 
itself  essentially  of  the  nature  of  a  hypothesis. 

In  the  views  of  the  judgment  so  far  brought  out,  reality, 
with  which  it  is  generally  admitted  that  the  judgment 
attempts  to  deal  in  some  way,  appears  to  lie  outside  the  act 
of  judging.  Now,  everyone  would  say  that  we  make  some 
advance  in  judging,  and  that  we  have  a  better  grasp  of 
things  after  than  before.  But  how  is  this  possible  if  reality 
lies  without  or  beyond  our  act  of  judging?  Is  the  reality 
we  now  have  the  same  that  we  had  to  begin  with?  If  so, 
then  we  have  made  no  advance  as  far  as  the  real  itself  is 
concerned.  If  merely  our  conception  of  it  has  changed, 
then  it  is  not  clear  why  we  may  not  be  even  worse  off  than 
before.  If  reality  does  lie  beyond  our  judgment,  then  how, 
in  the  nature  of  the  case,  can  we  ever  know  whether  we 
have  approached  it  or  have  gone  still  farther  away?  To 
make  any  claim  of  approximation  implies  that  we  do  reach 
reality  in  some  measure,  at  least,  and,  if  so,  it  is  difficult  to 
understand  how  it  lies  beyond,  and  is  independent  of,  the 
act  of  judging. 

Further  analysis  of  judgment. —  It  remains  to  be  seen 
whether  a  further  investigation  of  the  judgment  will  still 
show  the  predicate  to  be  a  hypothesis.  It  is  evident  that  in 
some  cases  the  judgment  appears  at  the  end  of  a  more  or 
less  pronounced  reflective  process,  during  which  other  pos- 
sible judgments  have  suggested  themselves,  but  have  been 


150  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

rejected.  The  history  of  scientific  discovery  is  filled  with 
cases  which  illustrate  the  nature  of  the  process  by  which  a 
new  theory  is  developed.  For  instance,  in  Darwin's  Forma- 
lion  of  Vegetable  Mould  through  the  Action  of  Earth  Worms, 
we  find  the  record  of  successive  steps  in  the  development  of 
his  hypothesis.  Darwin  suspected  from  his  observations  that 
vegetable  mold  was  due  to  some  agency  which  was  not  yet 
determined.  He  reasoned  that  if  vegetable  mold  is  the  result 
of  the  life-habits  of  earthworms,  i.  e.,  if  earth  is  brought  up 
by  them  from  beneath  the  surface  and  afterward  spread  out 
by  wind  and  rain,  then  small  objects  lying  on  the  surface  of  the 
ground  would  tend  to  disappear  gradually  below  the  surface. 
Facts  seemed  to  support  his  theory,  for  layers  of  red  sand, 
pieces  of  chalk,  and  stones  were  found  to  have  disappeared 
below  the  surface  in  a  greater  or  less  degree.  A  common 
explanation  had  been  that  heavy  objects  tend  to  sink  in  soft 
soil  through  their  own  weight,  but  the  earthworm  hypothe- 
sis led  to  a  more  careful  examination  of  the  data.  It  was 
found  that  the  weight  of  the  object  and  the  softness  of  the 
ground  made  no  marked  difference,  for  sand  and  light  objects 
sank,  and  the  ground  was  not  always  soft.  In  general,  it 
was  shown  that  where  earthworms  were  found  vegetable 
mold  was;  also  present,  and  vice  versa. 

In  this  investigation  of  Darwin's  the  conflicting  explana- 
tions of  sinking  stones  appear  within  the  main  question  of 
the  formation  of  vegetable  mold  by  earthworms.  The  facts 
that  disagreed  with  the  old  theory  about  sinking  stones  were 
approached  through  this  new  one.  But  the  theories  had  some- 
thing in  common,  viz.,  the  disappearance  of  the  stones  or 
other  objects:  they  differed  in  their  further  determination  of 
this  disappearance.  In  this  case  it  may  seem  as  if  the  facts 
which  were  opposed  to  the  current  theory  of  sinking  stones 
were  seen  to  be  discrepant  only  after  the  earthworm  hypothe- 
sis had  been  advanced ;  the  conflict  between  the  new  facts 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  151 

and  the  old  theory  appears  to  have  arisen  through  the  influ- 
ence of  the  new  theory. 

There  are  cases,  however,  where  the  facts  seem  clearly  to 
contradict  the  old  theory  and  thus  give  rise  to  a  new  one. 
For  example,  we  find  in  Darwin's  introduction  to  his  Origin 
of  Species  the  following:  "In  considering  the  origin  of 
species  it  is  quite  conceivable  that  a  naturalist  reflecting  on 
the  mental  affinities  of  organic  beings,  on  their  embryologi- 
cal  relations,  their  geographical  distribution,  geological  suc- 
cession, and  other  such  facts,  might  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  species  had  not  been  independently  created  but  had 
descended,  like  varieties,  from  other  species."  It  would 
seem  from  this  statement  that  certain  data  were  found  for 
which  the  older  theory  of  independent  creation  did  not  offer 
an  adequate  explanation.  And  yet  the  naturalist  would 
hardly  * 'reflect"  on  all  these  topics  in  a  comparative  way 
unless  some  other  mode  of  interpretation  were  already  dawn- 
ing upon  him,  which  led  him  to  review  the  accepted  reflec- 
tions or  views. 

As  a  more  simple  illustration,  we  may  cite  the  common 
experience  of  a  person  who  is  uncertain  concerning  the 
identity  of  an  approaching  object,  say,  another  person.  At 
first  he  may  not  be  sure  it  is  a  person  at  all.  He  then  sees 
that  it  is  someone,  and  as  the  person  approaches  he  is  inclined 
to  believe  him  to  be  an  acquaintance.  As  the  supposed 
acquaintance  continues  to  approach,  the  observer  may  dis- 
tinguish certain  features  that  cause  him  to  doubt,  and  then 
relinquish  his  supposition  that  it  is  an  acquaintance.  Or, 
he  may  conclude  at  once  that  the  approaching  person  is 
another  individual  he  knows,  and  the  transition  may  be  so 
readily  made  from  one  to  the  other  that  it  would  be  difficult 
to  determine  whether  the  discordant  features  are  discordant 
before  the  new  supposition  arises,  or  whether  they  are  not 
recognized  as  conflicting  till  this  second  person  is  in  mind. 


152  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

Or,  again,  the  identification  of  the  new  individual  and  the 
discovery  of  the  features  that  are  in  conflict  with  the  first 
supposition  may  appear  to  go  on  together. 

Now,  marked  lines  of  likeness  appear  between  this 
relatively  simple  judgment  and  the  far  more  involved  ones 
of  scientific  research.  In  the  more  extended  scientific 
process  we  find  data  contradicting  an  old  theory  and  a  new 
hypothesis  arising  to  account  for  them.  The  hypothesis  is 
tested,  and  along  with  its  verification  we  have  the  rejection, 
or  rather  the  modification,  of  the  old  theory.  Similarly,  in 
case  of  the  approaching  stranger  all  these  features  are 
present,  though  in  less  pronounced  degree.  In  scientific 
investigation  there  is  an  interval  of  testing  by  means  of  more 
careful  consideration  of  the  data  and  even  actual  experimen- 
tation. Before  an  explanation  is  accepted  subject  to  test,  a 
number  of  others  may  have  been  suggested  and  rejected. 
They  may  not  have  received  even  explicit  recognition.  In 
case  of  the  identification  of  the  stranger  this  feature  is 
also  present.  Between  two  fairly  definite  attempts  to 
identify  the  mind  does  not  remain  a  mere  blank  or  station- 
ary, but  other  possible  identifications  may  be  suggested 
which  do  not  have  sufficient  plausibility  to  command  serious 
attention;  they  are  only  comparatively  brief  suggestions  or 
tendencies. 

It  is  to  be  noted  that  in  all  these  instances  the  first  sup- 
position was  not  entirely  abandoned,  but  was  modified  and 
more  exactly  determined.  (Why  it  could  not  be  wholly 
false  and  the  new  one  wholly  new,  will  be  considered  later 
in  connection  with  discussion  of  the  persistence  and  re- 
formation of  habit.)  There  was  such  a  modification  of  the 
old  theory  as  would  meet  the  requirements  of  the  new  data, 
and  the  new  explanations  thus  contained  both  old  and  new 
features. 

We  have  seen  that  the  predicate  of  the  scientific   judg- 


THE  NATUEE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  153 

ment  is  a  hypothesis  which  is  consciously  applied  to  certain 
data.  If  the  similarity  between  the  scientific  judgment  and 
the  more  immediate  and  simple  judgment  is  to  be  main- 
tained, it  is  clear  that  the  predicate  of  the  simple  judgment 
must  be  of  like  nature.  The  structure  of  the  two  varieties 
of  judgment  differs  only  in  the  degree  of  explicitness  which 
the  hypothesis  acquires.  That  is,  the  predicate  of  a  judg- 
ment, as  such,  is  ideal;  it  is  meaning,  significant  quality. 
If  conditions  are  such  as  to  make  the  one  judging  hesitant 
or  doubtful  the  mind  wavers;  the  predicate  is  not  applied 
at  once  to  the  determination  or  qualification  of  data,  and 
hence  comes  to  more  distinct  consciousness  on  its  own 
account.  From  being  "  ideal,"  it  becomes  an  idea.  Yet  its 
sole  purpose  and  value  remains  in  its  possible  use  to  inter- 
pret data.  Let  the  idea  remain  detached,  and  let  the  query 
whether  it  be  a  true  predicate  (i.  e.,  really  fit  to  be  employed 
in  determining  the  present  data)  become  more  critical,  and 
the  idea  becomes  clearly  a  hypothesis.1  In  other  words,  the 
hypothesis  is  just  the  predicate-function  of  judgment  defi- 
nitely apprehended  and  regarded  with  reference  to  its  nature 
and  adequacy. 

Psychological  analysis  of  judgment. — This  hypothetical 
nature  of  the  predicate  will  be  even  more  apparent  after  a 
further  psychological  analysis,  which,  while  applying  more 
directly  to  the  simpler  and  more  immediate  judgments,  may 
be  extended  to  the  more  involved  ones  as  well. 

In  psychological  terms,  we  may  say,  in  explanation  of 
the  judging  process,  that  some  stimulus  to  action  has  failed 
to  function  properly  as  a  stimulus,  and  that  the  activity 

iAdvanced  grammarians  treat  this  matter  in  a  way  which  should  be  instructive 
to  logicians.  The  hypothesis,  says  SWEET  (§  295  of  A  New  English  Grammar,  Logical 
and  Historical,  Oxford,  1892),  suggests  an  affirmation  or  negation  "as  objects  of 
thought."  "  In  fact,  we  often  say  supposing  (that  is,  '  thinking ')  it  is  true,  instead 
of  if  it  is  true."  In  a  word,  the  hypothetical  judgment  as  such  puts  explicitly  before 
us  the  content  of  thought,  of  the  predicate  or  hypothesis ;  and  in  so  far  is  a  moment 
in  judgment  rather  than  adequate  judgment  itself. 


154  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

which  was  going  on  has  thus  been  interrupted.  Kesponse 
in  the  accustomed  way  has  failed.  In  such  a  case  there 
arises  a  division  in  experience  into  sensation  content  as  sub- 
ject and  ideal  content  as  predicate.  In  other  words,  an 
activity  has  been  going  on  in  accordance  with  established 
habits,  but  upon  failure  of  the  accustomed  stimulus  to  be 
longer  an  adequate  stimulus  this  particular  activity  ceases, 
and  is  resumed  in  an  integral  form  only  when  a  new  habit 
is  set  up  to  which  the  new  or  altered  stimulus  is  adequate.  It 
is  in  this  process  of  reconstruction  that  subject  and  predicate 
appear.  Sensory  quality  marks  the  point  of  stress,  or 
seeming  arrest,  while  the  ideal  or  imaged  aspect  defines  the 
continuing  activity  as  projected,  and  hence  that  with  which 
start  is  to  be  made  in  coping  with  the  obstacle.  It  serves  as 
standpoint  of  regard  and  mode  of  indicated  behavior.  The 
sensation  stands  for  the  interrupted  habit,  while  the  image 
stands  for  the  new  habit,  that  is,  the  new  way  of  dealing 
with  the  subject-matter.1 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  purpose  of  the  judgment  is  to 
obtain  an  adequate  stimulus  in  that,  when  stimulus  and 
response  are  adjusted  to  each  other,  activity  will  be  resumed. 
But  if  this  reconstruction  and  response  were  to  follow  at 
once,  would  there  be  any  clearly  defined  act  of  judging  at 
all?  In  such  a  case  there  would  be  no  judgment,  properly 
speaking,  and  no  occasion  for  it.  There  would  be  simply  a 
ready  transition  from  one  line  of  activity  to  another;  we 
should  have  changed  our  method  of  reaction  easily  and 
readily  to  meet  the  new  requirements.  On  the  one  hand, 
our  subject-matter  would  not  have  become  a  clearly  recog- 
nized datum  with  which  we  must  deal;  on  the  other  hand, 
there  would  be  no  ideal  method  of  construing  it.2  Activity 

1  This  carries  with  it,  of  course,  the  notion  that  "  sensation  "  and  "  image  "  are 
not  distinct  psychical  existences  in  themselves,  but  are  distinguished  logical  forces. 

2  Concerning  the  strict  correlativity  of  subject  and  predicate,  data  and  hypo- 
thesis, see  pp.  182,183. 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  155 

would  have  changed  without  interruption,  and  neither  sub- 
ject nor  predicate  would  have  arisen. 

In  order  that  judgment  may  take  place  there  must  be 
interruption  and  suspense.  Under  what  conditions,  then,  is 
this  suspense  and  uncertainty  possible  ?  Our  reply  must  be 
that  we  hesitate  because  of  more  or  less  sharply  defined 
alternatives ;  we  are  not  sure  which  predicate,  which  method 
of  reaction,  is  the  right  one.  The  clearness  with  which 
these  alternatives  come  to  mind  depends  upon  the  degree  of 
explicitness  of  the  judgment,  or,  more  exactly,  the  explicit- 
ness  of  the  judgment  depends  upon  the  sharpness  of  these 
alternatives.  Alternatives  may  be  carefully  weighed  one 
against  the  other,  as  in  deliberative  judgments ;  or  they  may 
be  scarcely  recognized  as  alternatives,  as  in  the  case  in  the 
greater  portion  of  our  more  simple  judgments  of  daily  con- 
duct. 

The  predicate  is  essentially  hypothetical. — If  we  review 
in  a  brief  resume"  the  types  of  judgment  we  have  considered, 
we  find  in  the  explicit  scientific  judgment  a  fairly  well- 
defined  subject-matter  which  we  seek  further  to  determine. 
Different  suggestions  present  themselves  with  varying 
degrees  of  plausibility.  Some  are  passed  by  as  soon  as 
they  arise.  Others  gain  a  temporary  recognition.  Some 
are  explicitly  tested  with  resulting  acceptance  or  rejec- 
tion. The  acceptance  of  any  one  explanation  involves  the 
rejection  of  some  other  explanation.  During  the  process  of 
verification  or  test  the  newly  advanced  supposition  is  recog- 
nized to  be  more  or  less  doubtful.  Besides  the  hypothesis 
which  is  tentatively  applied  there  is  recognized  the  possi- 
bility of  others.  In  the  disjunctive  judgment  these  possible 
reactions  are  thought  to  be  limited  to  certain  clearly  defined 
alternatives,  while  in  the  less  explicit  judgments  they  are 
not  so  clearly  brought  out.  Throughout  the  various  forms 
of  judgment,  from  the  most  complex  and  deliberate  down  to 


156  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

the  most  simple  and  immediate,  we  found  that  a  process 
could  be  traced  which  was  like  in  kind  and  varied  only  in 
degree.  And,  finally,  in  the  most  immediate  judgments 
where  some  of  these  features  seem  to  disappear,  the  same 
account  not  only  appears  to  be  the  most  reasonable  one,  but 
there  is  the  additional  consideration,  from  the  psychological 
side,  that  were  not  the  judgment  of  this  doubtful,  tentative 
character,  it  would  be  difficult  to  understand  how  there  could 
be  judgment  as  distinct  from  a  reflex.  It  appears,  then,  that 
throughout,  the  predicate  is  essentially  of  the  nature  of  a 
hypothesis  for  dealing  with  the  subject-matter.  And,  how- 
ever simple  and  immediate,  or  however  involved  and  pro- 
longed, the  judgment  may  be,  it  is  to  be  regarded  as 
essentially  a  process  of  reconstruction  which  aims  at  the 
resumption  of  an  interrupted  experience ;  and  when  experi- 
ence has  become  itself  a  consciously  intellectual  affair,  at  the 
restoration  of  a  unified  objective  situation. 

II 

Criticism  of  certain  views  concerning  the  hypothesis. — 
The  explanation  we  have  given  of  the  hypothesis  will  enable 
us  to  criticise  the  treatment  it  has  received  from  the 
empirical  and  the  rationalistic  schools.  We  shall  endeavor 
to  point  out  that  these  schools  have,  in  spite  of  their  opposed 
views,  an  assumption  in  common — something  given  in  a 
fixed,  or  non-instrumental  way ;  and  that  consequently  the 
hypothesis  is  either  impossible  or  else  futile. 

Bacon  is  commonly  recognized  as  a  leader  in  the  reac- 
tionary inductive  movement,  which  arose  with  the  decline 
of  scholasticism,  and  will  serve  as  a  good  example  of  the 
extreme  empirical  position.  In  place  of  authority  and  the 
deductive  method,  Bacon  advocated  a  return  to  nature  and 
induction  from  data  given  through  observation.  The  new 
method  which  he  advanced  has  both  a  positive  and  a 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  157 

negative  side.  Before  any  positive  steps  can  be  taken,  the 
mind  must  be  cleared  of  the  various  false  opinions  and 
prejudices  that  have  been  acquired.  This  preliminary  task 
of  freeing  the -mind  from  "phantoms,"  or  "eidola,"  which 
Bacon  likened  to  the  cleansing  of  the  threshing-floor,  having 
been  accomplished,  nature  should  be  carefully  interrogated. 
There  must  be  no  hasty  generalization,  for  the  true  method 
"  collects  axioms  from  sense  and  particulars,  ascending  con- 
tinuously and  by  degrees,  so  that  in  the  end  it  arrives  at 
the  most  general  axioms."  These  axioms  of  Bacon's  are 
generalizations  based  on  observation,  and  are  to  be  applied 
deductively,  but  the  distinguishing  feature  of  Bacon's 
induction  is  its  carefully  graduated  steps.  Others,  too,  had 
proceeded  with  caution  (for  instance  Galileo),  but  Bacon  laid 
more  stress  than  they  on  the  subordination  of  steps. 

It  is  evident  that  Bacon  left  very  little  room  for  hypothe- 
ses, and  this  is  in  keeping  with  his  aversion  to  anticipa- 
tion of  nature  by  means  of  "phantoms"  of  any  sort;  he 
even  said  explicitly  that  "  our  method  of  discovery  in  science 
is  of  such  a  nature  that  there  is  not  much  left  to  acuteness 
and  strength  of  genius,  but  all  degrees  of  genius  and  intel- 
lect are  brought  nearly  to  the  same  level."1  Bacon  gave  no 
explanation  of  the  function  of  the  hypothesis ;  in  his  opinion 
it  had  no  lawful  place  in  scientific  procedure  and  must  be 
banished  as  a  disturbing  element.  Instead  of  the  recipro- 
cal relation  between  hypothesis  and  data,  in  which  hypothe- 
sis is  not  only  tested  in  experience,  but  at  the  same  time 
controls  in  a  measure  the  very  experience  which  tests  it, 
Bacon  would  have  a  gradual  extraction  of  general  laws  from 
nature  through  direct  observation.  He  is  so  afraid  of  the 
distorting  influence  of  conception  that  he  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  conception  upon  any  terms.  So  fearful  is  he  of 
the  influence  of  pre- judgment,  of  prejudice,  that  he  will  have 

1  Novum  Organum,  Vol.  I,  p.  61. 


158  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

no  judging  which  depends  upon  ideas,  since  the  idea 
involves  anticipation  of  the  fact.  Particulars  are  some- 
how to  arrange  and  classify  themselves,  and  to  record  or 
register,  in  a  mind  free  from  conception,  certain  generaliza- 
tions. Ideas  are  to  be  registered  derivatives  of  the  given 
particulars.  This  view  is  the  essence  of  empiricism  as  a 
logical  theory.  If  the  views  regarding  the  logic  of  thought 
before  set  forth  are  correct,  it  goes  without  saying  that  such 
empiricism  is  condemned  to  self-contradiction.  It  endeavors 
to  construct  judgment  in  terms  of  its  subject  alone;  and 
the  subject,  as  we  have  seen,  is  always  a  co-respondent  to  a 
predicate — an  idea  or  mental  attitude  or  tendency  of  intellec- 
tual determination.  Thus  the  subject  of  judgment  can  be  deter- 
mined only  with  reference  to  a  corresponding  determination 
of  the  predicate.  Subject  and  predicate,  fact  and  idea,  are  con- 
temporaneous, not  serial  in  their  relations  (see  pp.  110-12). 

Less  technically  the  failure  of  Bacon's  denial  of  the  worth 
of  hypothesis — which  is  in  such  exact  accord  with  empiri- 
cism in  logic — shows  itself  in  his  attitude  toward  experi- 
mentation and  toward  observation.  Bacon's  neglect  of 
experimentation  is  not  an  accidental  oversight,  but  is  bound 
up  with  his  view  regarding  the  worthlessness  of  conception 
or  anticipation.  To  experiment  means  to  set  out  from  an 
idea  as  well  as  from  facts,  and  to  try  to  construe,  or  even  to 
discover,  facts  in  accordance  with  the  idea.  Experimenta- 
tion not  only  anticipates,  but  strives  to  make  good  an  antici- 
pation. Of  course,  this  struggle  is  checked  at  every  point 
by  success  or  failure,  and  thus  the  hypothesis  is  continuously 
undergoing  in  varying  ratios  both  confirmation  and  transfor- 
mation. But  this  is  not  to  make  the  hypothesis  secondary  to 
the  fact.  It  is  simply  to  remain  true  to  the  proposition  that 
the  distinction  and  the  relationship  of  the  two  is  a  thoroughly 
contemporaneous  one.  But  it  is  impossible  to  draw  any 
fixed  line  between  experimentation  and  scientific  observa- 


THE  NATURE  OP  HYPOTHESIS  159 

tions.  To  insist  upon  the  need  of  systematic  observation 
and  collection  of  particulars  is  to  set  up  a  principle  which  is 
as  distinct  from  the  casual  accumulation  of  impressions  as 
it  is  from  nebulous  speculation.  If  there  is  to  be  observa- 
tion of  a  directed  sort,  it  must  be  with  reference  to  some 
problem,  some  doubt,  and  this,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  stimu- 
lus which  throws  the  mind  into  a  certain  attitude  of  response. 
Controlled  observation  is  inquiry,  it  is  search ;  consequently 
it  must  be  search  for  something.  Nature  cannot  answer 
interrogations  excepting  as  such  interrogations  are  put;  and 
the  putting  of  a  question  involves  anticipation.  The  observer 
does  not  inquire  about  anything  or  look  for  anything  except- 
ing as  he  is  after  something.  This  search  implies  at  once 
the  incompleteness  of  the  particular  given  facts,  and  the 
possibility — that  is  ideal — of  their  completion. 

It  was  not  long  until  the  development  of  natural  science 
compelled  a  better  understanding  of  its  actual  procedure 
sthan  Bacon  possessed.  Empiricism  changed  to  experimen- 
talism.  With  experimentalism  inevitably  came  the  recog- 
nition of  hypotheses  in  observing,  collecting,  and  comparing 
facts.  It  is  clear,  for  instance, that  Newton's  fruitful  investi- 
gations are  not  conducted  in  accordance  with  the  Baconian 
notion.  It  is  quite  clear  that  his  celebrated  four  rules  for 
philosophizing1  are  in  truth  statements  of  certain  principles 
which  are  to  be  observed  in  forming  hypotheses.  They 
imply  that  scientific  technique  had  advanced  to  a  point 

1  Newton's  "  Rules  for  Philosophizing  "  (Principia,  Book  III)  are  as  follows: 

Rule  I.  "  No  more  causes  of  natural  things  are  to  be  admitted  than  such  as  are 
both  true,  and  sufficient  to  explain  the  phenomena  of  those  things." 

Rule  II.  "  Natural  effects  of  the  same  kind  are  to  be  referred  as  far  as  possible 
to  the  same  causes.'' 

Rule  III.  "  Those  qualities  of  bodies  that  can  neither  be  increased  nor  dimin- 
ished in  intensity,  and  which  are  found  to  belong  to  all  bodies  within  reach  of  our 
experiments  are  to  be  regarded  as  qualities  of  all  bodies  whatever." 

Rule  IV.  "In  experimental  philosophy  propositions  collected  by  induction 
from  phenomena  are  to  be  regarded  either  as  accurately  true  or  very  nearly  true 
notwithstanding  any  contrary  hypothesis,  till  other  phenomena  occur,  by  which  they 
are  made  more  accurate,  or  are  rendered  subject  to  exceptions." 


160  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

where  hypotheses  were  such  regular  and  indispensable  fac- 
tors that  certain  uniform  conditions  might  be  laid  down  for 
their  use.  The  fourth  rule  in  particular  is  a  statement  of 
the  relative  validity  of  hypothesis  as  such  until  there  is 
ground  for  entertaining  a  contrary  hypothesis. 

The  subsequent  history  of  logical  theory  in  England  is 
conditioned  upon  its  attempt  to  combine  into  one  system  the 
theories  of  empiristic  logic  with  recognition  of  the  procedure 
of  experimental  science.  This  attempt  finds  its  culmination 
in  the  logic  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  Of  his  interest  in  and 
fidelity  to  the  actual  procedure  of  experimental  science,  as 
he  saw  it,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  Of  his  good  faith  in  con- 
cluding his  Introduction  with  the  words  following  there  can 
be  no  doubt:  "I  can  conscientiously  affirm  that  no  one 
proposition  laid  down  in  this  work  has  been  adopted  for  the 
sake  of  establishing,  or  with  any  reference  for  its  fitness  in 
being  employed  in  establishing,  preconceived  opinions  in 
any  department  of  knowledge  or  of  inquiry  on  which  the 
speculative  world  is  still  undecided."  Yet  Mill  was  equally 
attached  to  the  belief  that  ultimate  reality,  as  it  is  for  the 
human  mind,  is  given  in  sensations,  independent  of  ideas ; 
and  that  all  valid  ideas  are  combinations  and  convenient 
ways  of  using  such  given  material.  Mill's  very  sincerity  made 
it  impossible  that  this  belief  should  not  determine,  at  every 
point,  his  treatment  of  the  thinking  process  and  of  its  various 
instrumentalities . 

In  Book  III,  chap.  14,  Mill  discusses  the  logic  of  expla- 
nation, and  in  discussing  this  topic  naturally  finds  it  neces- 
sary to  consider  the  matter  of  the  proper  use  of  scientific 
hypotheses.  This  is  conducted  from  the  standpoint  of  their 
use  as  that  is  reflected  in  the  technique  of  scientific  dis- 
covery. In  Book  IV,  chap.  2,  he  discusses  "Abstraction  or 
the  Formation  of  Conceptions  "  —  a  topic  which  obviously 
involves  the  forming  of  hypotheses.  In  this  chapter,  his  con- 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  161 

sideration  is  conducted  in  terms,  not  of  scientific  procedure, 
but  of  general  philosophical  theory,  and  this  point  of  view 
is  emphasized  by  the  fact  that  he  is  opposing  a  certain  view 
of  Dr.  Whewell. 

The  contradiction  between  the  statements  in  the  two 
chapters  will  serve  to  bring  out  the  two  points  already  made, 
viz.,  the  correspondent  character  of  datum  and  hypothesis, 
and  the  origin  of  the  latter  in  a  problematic  situation  and  its 
consequent  use  as  an  instrument  of  unification  and  solution. 
Mill  first  points  out  that  hypotheses  are  invented  to  enable 
the  deductive  method  to  be  applied  earlier  to  phenomena ; 
that  it  does  this  by  suppressing  the  first  of  the  three  steps, 
induction,  ratiocination,  and  verification.  He  states  that : 

The  process  of  tracing  regularity  in  any  complicated,  and  at 
first  sight  confused,  set  of  appearances  is  necessarily  tentative;  we 
begin  by  making  any  supposition,  even  a  false  one,  to  see  what  con- 
sequences will  follow  from  it;  and  by  observing  how  these  differ 
from  the  real  phenomena,  we  learn  what  corrections  to  make  in  our 

assumption Neither  induction  nor  deduction  would  enable 

us  to  understand  even  the  simplest  phenomena,  if  we  did  not 
often  commence  by  anticipating  the  results;  by  making  a  provi- 
sional supposition,  at  first  essentially  conjectural,  as  to  some  of  the 
very  notions  which  constitute  the  final  object  of  the  inquiry.1 

If  in  addition  we  recognize  that,  according  to  Mill,  our 
direct  experience  of  nature  always  presents  us  with  a  compli- 
cated and  confused  set  of  appearances,  we  shall  be  in  no 
doubt  as  to  the  importance  of  ideas  as  anticipations  of  a  pos- 
sible experience  not  yet  had.  Thus  he  says: 

The  order  of  nature,  as  perceived  at  a  first  glance,  presents  at 
every  instant  a  chaos  followed  by  another  chaos.  We  must  decom- 
pose each  chaos  into  single  facts.  We  must  learn  to  see  in  the 
chaotic  antecedent  a  multitude  of  distinct  antecedents,  in  the  cha- 
otic consequent  a  multitude  of  distinct  consequents.2 

!Book  III,  chap.  2,  sec.  5 ;  italics  mine.  The  latter  part  of  the  passage,  begin- 
ning with  the  words  "  If  we  did  not  often  commence,"  etc.,  is  quoted  by  Mill  from 
Comte.  The  words  "  neither  induction  nor  deduction  would  enable  us  to  understand 
even  the  simplest  phenomena"  are  his  own. 

a  Book  III,  chap.  7,  sec.l. 


162  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

In  the  next  section  of  the  same  chapter  he  goes  on  to  state 
that,  having  discriminated  the  various  antecedents  and  con- 
sequents, we  then  "  are  to  inquire  which  is  connected  with 
which."  This  requires  a  still  further  resolution  of  the  complex 
and  of  the  confused.  To  effect  this  we  must  vary  the  cir- 
cumstances; we  must  modify  the  experience  as  given  with 
reference  to  accomplishing  our  purpose.  To  accomplish 
this  purpose  we  have  recourse  either  to  observation  or  to 
experiment:  "We  may  either  find  an  instance  in  nature 
suited  to  our  purposes,  or,  by  an  artificial  arrangement  of 
circumstances,  make  one"  (the  italics  in  "suited  to  our  pur- 
pose" are  mine;  the  others  are  Mill's).  He  then  goes  on  to 
say  that  there  is  no  real  logical  distinction  between  observa- 
tion and  experimentation.  The  four  methods  of  experimen- 
tal inquiry  are  expressly  discussed  by  Mill  in  terms  of  their 
worth  in  singling  out  and  connecting  the  antecedents  and 
consequents  which  actually  belong  together,  from  the  chaos 
and  confusion  of  direct  experience. 

We  have  only  to  take  these  statements  in  their  logical 
connection  with  each  other  (and  this  connection  runs  through 
the  entire  treatment  by  Mill  of  scientific  inquiry),  to  recog- 
nize the  absolute  necessity  of  hypothesis  to  undertaking  any 
directed  inquiry  or  scientific  operation.  Consequently  we 
are  not  surprised  at  finding  him  saying  that  "the  function 
of  hypotheses  is  one  which  must  be  reckoned  absolutely 
indispensable  in  science ;"  and  again  that  "  the  hypothesis 
by  suggesting  observations  and  experiments  puts  us  on  the 
road  to  independent  evidence."1 

Since  Mill's  virtual  retraction,  from  the  theoretical  point 
of  view,  of  what  is  here  said  from  the  standpoint  of  scientific 
procedure,  regarding  the  necessity  of  ideas  is  an  accompani- 
ment of  his  criticism  of  Whewell,  it  will  put  the  discussion 
in  better  perspective  if  we  turn  first  to  Whe well's  views.2 

1  Book  III,  chap.  14,  sees.  4  and  5. 

2  WILLIAM  WHEWELL,  The  Philosophy  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  London,  1840. 


THE  NATUKE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  163 

The  latter  began  by  stating  a  distinction  which  easily  might 
have  been  developed  into  a  theory  of  the  relation  of  fact  and 
idea  which  is  in  line  with  that  advanced  in  this  chapter,  and 
indeed  in  this  volume  as  a  whole.  He  questions  (chap.  2) 
the  fixity  of  the  distinction  between  theory  and  practice. 
He  points  out  that  what  we  term  facts  are  in  effect  simply 
accepted  inferences;  and  that  what  we  call  theories  are 
describable  as  facts,  in  proportion  as  they  become  thoroughly 
established.  A  true  theory  is  a  fact.  "All  the  great  theories 
which  have  successively  been  established  in  the  world  are 
now  thought  of  as  facts."  "The  most  recondite  theories 
when  firmly  established  are  accepted  as  facts ;  the  simplest 
facts  seem  to  involve  something  of  the  nature  of  theory." 

The  conclusion  is  that  the  distinction  is  a  historic  one, 
depending  upon  the  state  of  knowledge  at  the  time,  and 
upon  the  attitude  of  the  individual.  What  is  theory  for  one 
epoch,  or  for  one  inquirer  in  a  given  epoch,  is  fact  for  some 
other  epoch,  or  even  for  some  other  more  advanced  inquirer 
in  the  same  epoch.  It  is  theory  when  the  element  of  infer- 
ence involved  in  judging  any  fact  is  consciously  brought 
out;  it  is  fact  when  the  conditions  are  such  that  we  have 
never  been  led  to  question  the  inference  involved,  or  else, 
having  questioned  it,  have  so  thoroughly  examined  into  the 
inferential  process  that  there  is  no  need  of  holding  it  further 
before  the  mind,  and  it  relapses  into  unconsciousness  again. 
"  If  this  greater  or  less  consciousness  of  our  own  internal  act 
be  all  that  distinguishes  fact  from  theory,  we  must  allow  that 
the  distinction  is  still  untenable  "  (untenable,  that  is  to  say, 
as  a  fixed  separation).  Again,  "fact  and  theory  have  no 
essential  difference  except  in  the  degree  of  their  certainty 
and  familiarity.  Theory,  when  it  becomes  firmly  estab- 
lished and  steadily  lodged  in  the  mind  becomes  fact."  (P.  45; 
italics  mine.)  And,  of  course,  it  is  equally  true  that  as  fast 
as  facts  are  suspected  or  doubted,  certain  aspects  of  them 


164  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

are  transferred  into  the  class  of  theories  and  even  of  mere 
opinions. 

I  say  this  conception  might  have  been  developed  in  a 
way  entirely  congruous  with  the  position  of  this  chapter. 
This  would  have  happened  if  the  final  distinction  between 
fact  and  idea  had  been  formulated  upon  the  basis  simply  of 
the  points,  "  relative  certainty  and  familiarity."  From 
this  point  of  view  the  distinction  between  fact  and  idea  is 
one  purely  relative  to  the  doubt-inquiry  function.  It  has 
to  do  with  the  evolution  of  an  experience  as  regards  its  con- 
scious surety.  It  has  its  origin  in  problematic  situations. 
Whatever  appears  to  us  as  a  problem  appears  as  contrasted 
with  a  possible  solution.  Whatever  objects  of  thought  refer 
particularly  to  the  problematic  side  are  theories,  ideas, 
hypotheses;  whatever  relates  to  the  solution  side  is  surety, 
unquestioned  familiarity,  fact.  This  point  of  view  makes 
the  distinctions  entirely  relative  to  the  exigencies  of  the  pro- 
cess of  reflective  transformation  of  experience. 

Whewell,  however,  had  no  sooner  started  in  this  train  of 
thought  than  he  turns  his  back  upon  it.  In  chap.  3  he  trans- 
forms what  he  had  proclaimed  to  be  a  relative,  historic,  and 
working  distinction  into  a  fixed  and  absolute  one.  He 
distinguishes  between  sensations  and  ideas,  not  upon  a 
genetic  basis  with  reference  to  establishing  the  conditions 
of  further  operation ;  but  with  reference  to  a  fundamentally 
fixed  line  of  demarkation  between  what  is  passively  given  to 
the  mind  and  the  activity  put  forth  by  the  mind.  Thus  he 
reinstates  in  its  most  generalized  and  fixed,  and  therefore 
most  vicious,  form  the  separation  which  he  has  just  rejected. 
Sensations  are  a  brute  unchangeable  element  of  fact  which 
exists  and  persists  independent  of  ideas;  an  idea  is  a 
mode  of  mental  operation  which  occurs  and  recurs  in  an 
independent  individuality  of  its  own.  If  he  had  carried  out 
the  line  of  thought  with  which  he  began,  sensation  as  fact 


THE  NATUEE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  165 

would  have  been  that  residuum  of  familiarity  and  certainty 
which  cannot  be  eliminated,  however  much  else  of  an  expe- 
rience is  dissolved  in  the  inner  conflict.  Idea  as  hypothe- 
sis or  theory  would  have  been  the  corresponding  element 
in  experience  which  is  necessary  to  redintegrate  this  resi- 
duum into  a  coherent  and  significant  experience. 

But  since  Whewell  did  not  follow  out  his  own  line  of 
thought,  choosing  rather  to  fall  back  on  the  Kantian  anti- 
thesis of  sense  and  thought,  he  had  no  sooner  separated  his 
fact  and  idea,  his  given  datum  and  his  mental  relation,  than 
he  is  compelled  to  get  them  together  again.  The  idea  be- 
comes * '  a  general  relation  which  is  imposed  upon  perception 
by  an  act  of  the  mind,  and  which  is  different  from  anything 
which  our  senses  directly  offer  to  us"  (p.  26).  Such  con- 
ceptions are  necessary  to  connect  the  facts  which  we  learn 
from  our  senses  into  truths.  "The  ideal  conception  which 
the  mind  itself  supplies  is  superinduced  upon  the  facts  as 
they  are  originally  presented  to  observation.  Before  the 
inductive  truth  is  detected,  the  facts  are  there,  but  they  are 
many  and  unconnected.  The  conception  which  the  dis- 
coverer applies  to  them  gives  them  connection  and  unity." 
(P.  42.)  All  induction,  according  to  Whewell,  thus  depends 
upon  superinduction — imposition  upon  sensory  data  of  cer- 
tain ideas  or  general  relations  existing  independently  in 
the  mind.1 

We  do  not  need  to  present  again  the  objections  already 
offered  to  this  view:  the  impossibility  of  any  orderly  stimu- 
lation of  ideas  by  facts,  and  the  impossibility  of  any  check 
in  the  imposition  of  idea  upon  fact.  "Facts"  and  concep- 
tion are  so  thoroughly  separate  and  independent  that  any 
sensory  datum  is  indifferently  and  equally  related  to  any 
conceivable  idea.  There  is  no  basis  for  "  superinducing" 

1  The  essential  similarity  between  WhewelTs  view  and  that  of  Lotze,  already  dis- 
cussed (see  chap.  3)  is  of  course  explainable  on  the  basis  of  their  common  relation- 
ship to  Kant. 


166  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

one  idea  or  hypothesis,  rather  than  any  other,  upon  any 
particular  set  of  data. 

In  the  chapter  already  referred  to  upon  abstraction,  or 
the  formation  of  conceptions,  Mill  seizes  upon  this  difficulty. 
Yet  he  and  Whewell  have  one  point  in  common:  they  both 
agree  in  the  existence  of  a  certain  subject-matter  which  is 

o  « 

given  for  logical  purposes  quite  outside  of  the  logical  pro- 
cess itself.  Mill  agrees  with  Whewell  in  postulating  a 
raw  material  of  pure  sensational  data.  In  criticising  Whew- 
ell's  theory  of  superinduction  of  idea  upon  fact,  he  is 
therefore  led  to  the  opposite  assertion  of  the  complete  depend- 
ence of  ideas  as  such  upon  the  given  facts  as  such  —  in 
other  words,  he  is  led  to  a  reiteration  of  the  fundamental 
Baconian  empiricism;  and  thus  to  a  virtual  retraction  of 
what  he  had  asserted  regarding  the  necessity  of  ideas  to 
fruitful  scientific  inquiry,  whether  in  the  way  of  observa- 
tion or  experimentation.  The  following  quotation  gives  a 
fair  notion  of  the  extent  of  Mill's  retraction: 

The  conceptions  then  which  we  employ  for  the  colligation  and 
methodization  of  facts,  do  not  develop  themselves  from  within,  but 
are  impressed  upon  the  mind  from  without ;  they  are  never  ob- 
tained otherwise  than  by  way  of  comparison  and  abstraction,  and, 
in  the  most  important  and  most  numerous  cases,  are  evolved  by  ab- 
straction from  the  very  phenomena  which  it  is  their  office  to  colli- 
gate.1 

Even  here  Mill's  sense  for  the  positive  side  of  scientific  in- 
quiry suffices  to  reveal  to  him  that  the  "facts"  are  some- 
how inadequate  and  defective,  and  are  in  need  of  assistance 
from  ideas  — and  yet  the  ideas  which  are  to  help  out  the 
facts  are  to  be  the  impress  of  the  unsure  facts!  The  con- 
tradiction comes  out  very  clearly  when  Mill  says:  "The 
really  difficult  cases  are  those  in  which  the  conception  des- 
tined to  create  light  and  order  out  of  darkness  and  confu- 

i  Logic,  Book  IV,  chap.  2,  sec.  2 ;  italics  mine. 


THE  NATUKE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  167 

sion  has  to  be  sought  for  among  the  very  phenomena  which 
it  afterward  serves  to  arrange."1 

Of  course,  there  is  a  sense  in  which  Mill's  view  is  very 
much  nearer  the  truth  than  is  Whewell's.  Mill  at  least  sees 
that  "  idea  "  must  be  relevant  to  the  facts  or  data  which  it  is 
to  arrange,  which  are  to  have  "light  and  order"  introduced 
into  them  by  means  of  the  idea.  He  sees  clearly  enough 
that  this  is  impossible  save  as  the  idea  develops  within  the 
same  experience  in  which  the  "dark  and  confused"  facts  are 
presented.  He  goes  on  to  show  correctly  enough  how  con- 
flicting data  lead  the  mind  to  a  "confused  feeling  of  an 
analogy  "  between  the  data  of  the  confused  experience  and 
of  some  other  experience  which  is  orderly  (or  already  colli- 
gated and  methodized) ;  and  how  this  vague  feeling,  through 
processes  of  further  exploration  and  comparison  of  experi- 
ences, gets  a  clearer  and  more  adequate  form  until  we  finally 
accept  it.  He  shows  how  in  this  process  we  continually 
judge  of  the  worth  of  the  idea  which  is  in  process  of  forma- 
tion, by  reference  to  its  appropriateness  to  our  purpose.  He 
goes  so  far  as  to  say :  "  The  question  of  appropriateness  is 
relative  to  the  particular  object  we  have  in  view"'2  He  sums 
up  his  discussion  by  stating:  "We  cannot  frame  good  gen- 
eral conceptions  beforehand.  That  the  conception  we  have 
obtained  is  the  one  we  want  can  only  be  known  when  we  have 
done  the  work  for  the  sake  of  which  we  wanted  it" ' 

This  all  describes  the  actual  state  of  the  case,  but  it  is 
consistent  only  with  a  logical  theory  which  makes  the  dis- 
tinction between  fact  and  hypothesis  instrumental  in  the 
tiansformation  of  experience  from  a  confused  into  an  organ- 
ized form ;  not  with  Mill's  notion  that  sensations  are  some- 
how finally  and  completely  given  as  ultimate  facts,  and 

1  Ibid. 

2  Ibid.,  sec.  4;   in  sec.  6  he  states  even  more  expressly  that  any  conception  is  ap- 
propriate in  the  degree  in  which  it  "  helps  us  toward  what  we  wish  to  understand." 

3  Ibid.,  sec.  6 ;  italics  mine. 


168  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

that  ideas  are  mere  re-registrations  of  such  facts.  It  is 
perfectly  just  to  say  that  the  hypothesis  is  impressed  upon 
the  mind  (in  the  sense  that  any  notion  which  occurs  to  the 
mind  is  impressed)  in  the  course  of  an  experience.  It  is 
well  enough,  if  one  define  what  he  means,  to  say  that  the 
hypothesis  is  impressed  (that  is  to  say,  occurs  or  is  sug- 
gested) through  the  medium  of  given  facts,  or  even  of  sen- 
sations. But  it  is  equally  true  that  the  facts  are  presented 
and  that  sensations  occur  within  the  course  of  an  experience 
which  is  larger  than  the  bare  facts,  because  involving  the 
conflicts  among  them  and  the  corresponding  intention  to 
treat  them  in  some  fashion  which  will  secure  a  unified  expe- 
rience. Facts  get  power  to  suggest  ideas  to  the  mind  —  to 
"  impress"-  -  only  through  their  position  in  an  entire  expe- 
rience which  is  in  process  of  disintegration  and  of  recon- 
struction—  their  "  fringe  "  or  feeling  of  tendency  is  quite 
as  factual  as  they  are.  The  fact  that  "the  conception  we 
have  obtained  is  the  one  we  want  can  be  known  only  when 
we  have  done  the  work  for  the  sake  of  which  we  wanted  it," 
is  enough  to  show  that  it  is  not  bare  facts,  but  facts  in  rela- 
tion to  want  and  purpose  and  purpose  in  relation  to  facts, 
which  originate  the  hypothesis. 

It  wotfld  be  interesting  to  follow  the  history  of  discus- 
sion of  the  hypothesis  since  the  time  of  Whewell  and  of  Mill, 
particularly  in  the  writings  of  Jevons,  Venn,  and  Bosanquet. 
This  history  would  refine  the  terms  of  our  discussion  by 
introducing  more  complex  distinctions  and  relations.  But 
it  would  be  found,  I  think,  only  to  refine,  not  to  introduce 
any  fundamentally  new  principles.  In  each  case,  we  find  the 
writer  struggling  with  the  necessity  of  distinguishing 
between  fact  and  idea;  of  giving  the  fact  a  certain  primacy 
with  respect  to  testing  of  idea  and  of  giving  the  idea  a  primacy 
with  respect  to  the  significance  and  orderliness  of  the  fact ; 
and  of  holding  throughout  to  a  relationship  of  idea  with 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  169 

fact  so  intimate  that  the  idea  develops  only  by  being  "com- 
pared" with  facts  (that  is,  used  in  construing  them),  and  facts 
get  to  be  known  only  as  they  are  "  connected  "  through  the 
idea — and  we  find  that  what  is  a  maze  of  paradoxes  and 
inconsistencies  from  an  absolute,  from  a  non-historic  stand- 
point, is  a  matter  of  course  the  moment  it  is  looked  at  from 
the  standpoint  of  experience  engaged  in  self -transformation 
of  meaning  through  conflict  and  reconstitution. 

But  we  can  only  note  one  or  two  points.  Jevons's  "infi- 
nite ballot-box  "  of  nature  which  is  absolutely  neutral  as  to 
any  particular  conception  or  idea,  and  which  accordingly 
requires  as  its  correlate  the  formation  of  every  possible  hy- 
pothesis (all  standing  in  themselves  upon  the  same  level  of 
probability)  is  an  interesting  example  of  the  logical  conse- 
quences of  feeling  the  need  of  both  fact  and  hypothesis  for 
scientific  procedure  and  yet  regarding  them  as  somehow 
arising  independently  of  each  other.  It  is  an  attempt  to 
combine  extreme  empiricism  and  extreme  rationalism.  The 
process  of  forming  hypotheses  and  of  deducing  their  rational 
consequences  goes  on  at  random,  because  the  disconnectedness 
of  facts  as  given  is  so  ultimate  that  the  facts  suggest  one  hypo- 
thesis no  more  readily  than  another.  Mathematics,  in  its  two 
forms  of  measurements  as  applied  to  the  facts,  and  of  calcula- 
tion as  applied  in  deduction,  furnishes  Jevons  the  bridge  by 
which  he  finally  covers  the  gulf  which  he  has  first  himself  cre- 
ated. Venn's  theory  requires  little  or  no  restatement  to  bring 
it  into  line  with  the  position  taken  in  the  text.  He  holds  to 
the  origin  of  hypothesis  in  the  original  practical  needs  of 
mankind,  and  to  its  gradual  development  into  present  scien- 
tific form.1  He  states  expressly: 

The  distinction  between  what  is  known  and  what  is  not 
known  is  essential  to  Logic,  and  peculiarly  characteristic  of  it 
in  a  degree  not  to  be  found  in  any  other  science.  Inference  is  the 

i  VENN,  Empirical  Logic,  p.  383. 


170  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

process  of  passing  from  one  to  the  other;  from  facts  which  we  had 
accepted  as  premises,  to  those  which  we  have  not  yet  accepted, 
but  are  in  the  act  of  doing  so  by  the  very  process  in  question.  No 
scrutiny  of  the  facts  themselves,  regarded  as  objective,  can  ever 
detect  these  characteristics  of  their  greater  or  less  familiarity  to 
our  minds.  We  must  introduce  also  the  subjective  element  if  we 
wish  to  give  any  adequate  explanation  of  them.1 

Venn,  however,  does  not  attempt  a  thoroughgoing  state- 
ment of  logical  distinctions,  relations,  and  operations,  as 
parts  "of  the  act  of  passing  from  the  unknown  to  the  known." 
He  recognizes  the  relation  of  reflection  to  a  historic  process, 
which  we  have  here  termed  "reconstruction,"  and  the  origin 
and  worth  of  hypothesis  as  a  tool  in  the  movement,  but  does 
not  carry  his  analysis  to  a  systematic  form. 

Ill 

Origin  of  the  hypothesis. —  In  our  analysis  of  the  process 
of  judgment,  we  attempted  to  show  that  the  predicate  arises 
in  case  of  failure  of  some  line  of  activity  going  on  in  terms 
of  an  established  habit.  When  the  old  habit  is  checked 
through  failure  to  deal  with  new  conditions  (i.  e.,  when  the 
situation  is  such  as  to  stimulate  two  habits  with  distinct 
aims)  the  problem  is  to  find  a  new  method  of  response  — 
that  is,  to  co-ordinate  the  conflicting  tendencies  by  building 
up  a  single  aim  which  will  function  the  existing  situation. 
As  we  saw  that,  in  case  of  judgment,  habit  when  checked 
became  ideal,  an  idea,  so  the  new  habit  is  first  formalized  as 
an  ideal  type  of  reaction  and  is  the  hypothesis  by  which  we 
attempt  to  construe  new  data.  In  our  inquiry  as  to  how  this 
formulation  is  effected,  i.  e. ,  how  the  hypothesis  is  developed, 
it  will  be  convenient  to  take  some  of  the  currently  accepted 
statements  as  to  their  origin,  and  show  how  these  statements 
stand  in  reference  to  the  analysis  proposed. 

1  VENN,  Empirical  Logic,  p.  25;  italics  mine. 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS       171 

Enumerative  induction  and  allied  processes. — It  is 
pointed  out  by  Welton1  that  the  various  ways  in  which 
hypotheses  are  suggested  may  be  reduced  to  three  classes, 
viz.,  enumerative  induction,  conversion  of  propositions,  and 
analogy.  Under  the  head  of  "enumeration"  he  reminds  us 
that  "every  observed  regularity  of  connection  between  phe- 
nomena suggests  a  question  as  to  whether  it  is  universal." 
There  are  numerous  instances  of  this  in  mathematics.  For 
example,  it  is  noticed  that  1  +  3  =  22,  1  +  3  +  5  =  32,  1  +  3  + 
5  +  7— 42,  etc.;  and  one  is  led  to  ask  whether  there  is  any 
general  principle  involved,  so  that  the  sum  of  the  first  n  odd 
numbers  will  be  n2,  where  n  is  any  number,  however  great. 
In  this  early  form  of  inductive  inference  there  are  two  diver- 
gent tendencies.  One  is  the  tendency  to  complete  enumera- 
tion. This  tendency  is  clearly  ideal — it  transcends  the  facts 
as  given.  To  look  for  all  the  cases  is  thus  itself  an  experi- 
mental inquiry,  based  upon  a  hypothesis  which  it  endeavors 
to  test.  But  in  most  cases  enumeration  can  be  only  incom- 
plete, and  we  are  able  to  reach  nothing  better  than  proba- 
bility. Hence  the  other  tendency  in  the  direction  of  an 
analysis  of  content  in  search  for  a  principle  of  connection  in 
the  elements  in  any  one  case.  For  if  a  characteristic  belong- 
ing to  a  number  of  individuals  suggests  a  class  where  it 
belongs  to  all  individuals,  it  must  be  that  it  is  found  in 
every  individual  as  such.  The  hypothesis  of  complete  class 
involves  a  hypothesis  as  to  the  character  of  each  individual 
in  the  class.  Thus  a  hypothesis  as  to  extension  transforms 
itself  into  one  as  to  intension. 

But  it  is  analogy  which  Welton  considers  "the  chief 
source  from  which  new  hypotheses  are  drawn."  In  the 
second  tendency  mentioned  under  enumerative  induction, 
that  is,  the  tendency  to  analysis  of  content  or  intension,  we 
are  naturally  led  to  analogy,  for  in  our  search  for  the  char- 

i  WELTON,  Manual  of  Logic,  Vol.  II,  chap.  3. 


172  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

acteristic  feature  which  determines  classification  among  the 
concrete  particulars  our  first  step  will  be  an  inference  by 
analogy.  In  analogy  attention  is  turned  from  the  number 
of  observed  instances  to  their  character,  and,  because  par- 
ticulars have  some  feature  in  common,  they  are  supposed  to 
be  the  same  in  still  other  respects.  While  the  best  we  can 
reach  in  analogy  is  probability,  the  arguments  may  be  such 
as  to  result  in  a  high  degree  of  certainty.  The  form  of  the 
argument  is  valuable  in  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  distinguish 
between  essential  and  nonessential  characteristics  on  which 
to  base  our  analogy.  What  is  essential  and  what  nonessen- 
tial depends  upon  the  particular  end  we  have  in  view. 

In  addition  to  enumerative  induction,  which  Welton  has 
mentioned,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  there  are  a  number  of  other 
processes  which  are  very  similar  to  it  in  that  a  number  of 
particulars  appear  to  furnish  a  basis  for  a  general  principle 
or  method.  Such  instances  are  common  in  induction,  in 
instruction,  and  in  methods  of  proof. 

If  one  is  to  be  instructed  in  some  new  kind  of  labor,  he 
is  supposed  to  acquire  a  grasp  of  the  method  after  having 
been  shown  in  a  few  instances  how  this  particular  work  is  to 
be  done;  and,  if  he  performs  the  manipulations  himself,  so 
much  the  better.  It  is  not  asked  why  the  experience  of  a 
few  cases  should  be  of  any  assistance,  for  it  seems  self- 
evident  that  an  experienced  man,  a  man  who  has  acquired 
the  skill,  or  knack,  of  doing  things,  should  deal  better  with 
all  other  cases  of  similar  nature. 

There  is  something  very  similar  in  inductive  proofs,  as 
they  are  called.  The  inductive  proof  is  common  in  algebra. 
Suppose  we  are  concerned  in  proving  the  law  of  expansion 
of  the  binomial  theorem.  We  show  by  actual  calculation 
that,  if  the  law  holds  good  for  the  nth  power,  it  is  true  for 
the  n  +  first  power.  That  is,  if  it  holds  for  any  power,  it 
holds  for  the  next  also.  But  we  can  easily  show  that  it  does 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  173 

hold  for,  say,  the  second  power.  Then  it  must  be  true  for 
the  third,  and  hence  for  the  fourth,  and  so  on.  Whether 
this  law,  though  discovered  by  inductive  processes,  depends 
on  deduction  for  the  conclusiveness  of  its  proof,  as  Jevons 
holds;1  whether,  as  Erdmann2  contends,  the  proof  is  thor- 
oughly deductive;  or  whether  Wundt3  is  right  in  maintain- 
ing that  it  is  based  on  an  exact  analogy,  while  the 
fundamental  axioms  of  mathematics  are  inductive,  it  is  clear 
that  in  such  proofs  a  few  instances  are  employed  to  give  the 
learner  a  start  in  the  right  direction.  Something  suggests 
itself,  and  is  found  true  in  this  case,  in  the  next,  and  again 
in  the  next,  and  so  on.  It  may  be  questioned  whether  there 
is  usually  a  very  clear  notion  of  what  is  involved  in  the  "so 
on."  To  many  it  appears  to  mark  the  point  where,  after 
having  been  taken  a  few  steps,  the  learner  is  carried  on  by 
the  acquired  momentum  somewhat  after  the  fashion  of  one 
of  Newton's  laws  of  motion.  Whether  the  few  successive 
steps  are  an  integral  part  of  the  proof  or  merely  serve  as 
illustration,  they  are  very  generally  resorted  to.  In  fact, 
they  are  often  employed  where  there  is  no  attempt  to  intro- 
duce a  general  term  such  as  n,  or  &,  or  Z,  but  the  few  indi- 
vidual instances  are  deemed  quite  sufficient.  Such,  for 
instance,  is  the  custom  in  arithmetical  processes.  We  call 
attention  to  these  facts  in  order  to  show  that  successive 
cases  are  utilized  in  the  course  of  explanation  as  an  aid  in 
establishing  the  generality  of  a  law. 

In  geometry  we  find  a  class  of  proofs  in  which  the  suc- 
cessive steps  seem  to  have  great  significance.  A  common 
proof  of  the  area  of  the  circle  will  serve  as  a  fair  example. 
A  regular  polygon  is  circumscribed  about  the  circle.  Then 
as  the  number  of  its  sides  are  increased  its  area  will  approach 

i  W.  S.  JEVONS,  Principles  of  Science,  pp.  231,  232. 

2B.  ERDMANN,  "Zur  Theorie  des  Syllogismus  und  der  Induktion,"  Philoso- 
phische  Abhandlungen,  Vol.  VI,  p.  230. 

3  WUNDT,  Logik,  2d  ed.,  Vol.  II,  p.  131. 


174  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

that  of  the  circle,  as  its  perimeter  approaches  the  circumfer- 
ence of  the  circle.  The  area  of  the  circle  is  thus  inferred  to 
be  TTjR2,  since  the  area  of  the  polygon  is  always  ij-Rx  perim- 
eter, and  in  case  of  the  circle  the  circumference  =27r.R. 
Here  again  we  get  under  such  headway  by  means  of  the 
polygon  that  we  arrive  at  the  circle  with  but  little  difficulty. 
Had  we  attempted  the  transition  at  once,  say,  from  a  cir- 
cumscribed square,  we  should  doubtless  have  experienced 
some  uncertainty  and  might  have  recoiled  from  what  would 
seem  a  rash  attempt;  but  as  the  number  of  the  sides  of  our 
polygon  approach  infinity — that  mysterious  realm  where 
many  paradoxical  things  become  possible — the  transition 
becomes  so  easy  that  our  polygon  is  often  said  to  have  truly 
become  a  circle. 

Similarly,  some  statements  of  the  infinitesimal  calculus 
rest  on  the  assumption  that  slight  degrees  of  difference  may 
be  neglected.  Though  the  more  modern  theory  of  limits 
has  largely  displaced  this  attitude  in  calculus  and  has  also 
changed  the  method  of  proof  in  such  geometrical  problems 
as  the  area  of  the  circle,  the  underlying  motive  seems  to 
have  been  to  make  transitions  easy,  and  thus  to  make  possible 
a  continued  application  of  some  particular  method  or  way  of 
dealing  with  things. 

But  granted  that  this  is  all  true,  what  has  it  to  do  with 
the  origin  of  the  hypothesis?  It  seems  likely  that  the 
hypothesis  may  be  suggested  by  a  few  successive  instances; 
but  are  these  to  be  classed  with  the  successive  steps  in  proof 
to  which  we  have  referred?  In  the  first  place,  we  attempt 
to  prove  our  hypothesis  because  we  are  not  sure  it  is  true ; 
we  are  not  satisfied  that  there  are  no  other  tenable  hypothe- 
ses. But  if  we  do  test  it,  is  not  such  test  enough?  It 
depends  upon  how  thorough  a  grasp  we  have  of  the  situa- 
tion ;  but,  in  general,  each  test  case  adds  to  its  probability. 
The  value  of  tests  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  strengthen  and 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  175 

tend  to  confirm  our  hypothesis  by  checking  the  force  of 
alternatives.  One  instance  is  not  sufficient  because  there 
are  other  possible  incipient  hypotheses,  or  more  properly 
tendencies,  and  the  enumeration  serves  to  bring  one  of  these 
tendencies  into  prominence  in  that  it  diminishes  other  vague 
and  perhaps  subconscious  tendencies  and  strengthens  the 
one  which  suddenly  appears  as  the  mysterious  product  of 
genius. 

The  question  might  arise  why  the  mere  repetition  of  con- 
flicting tendencies  would  lead  to  a  predominance  of  one  of 
them.  Why  would  they  not  all  remain  in  conflict  and  con- 
tinue to  check  any  positive  result?  It  is  probably  because 
there  never  is  any  absolute .  equilibrium.  The  successive 
instances  tend  to  intensify  and  bring  into  prominence  some 
tendency  which  is  already  taking  a  lead,  so  to  speak.  And 
it  may  be  said  further  in  this  connection  that  only  as  seen 
from  the  outside,  only  as  a  mechanical  view  is  taken,  does 
there  appear  to  be  an  excluding  of  definitely  made  out  alter- 
natives. 

In  explanation  of  the  part  played  by  analogy  in  the  origin 
of  hypotheses,  Welton  points  out  that  a  mere  number  of 
instances  do  not  take  us  very  far,  and  that  there  must  be 
some  "  specification  of  the  instances  as  well  as  numbering  of 
them,"  and  goes  on  to  show  that  the  argument  by  enumera- 
tive  induction  passes  readily  into  one  from  analogy,  as  soon 
as  attention  is  turned  from  the  number  of  the  observed 
instances  to  their  character.  It  is  not  necessary,  however, 
to  pass  to  analogy  through  enumerative  induction.  "  When 
the  instances  presented  to  observation  offer  immediately  the 
characteristic  marks  on  which  we  base  the  inference  to  the 
connection  of  S  and  P,  we  can  proceed  at  once  to  an  infer- 
ence from  analogy,  without  any  preliminary  enumeration  of 
the  instances."1 

i  WELTON,  Manual  of  Logic,  Vol.  II,  p.  72. 


176  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

Welton,  and  logicians  generally,  regard  analogy  as  an 
inference  on  the  basis  of  partial  identity.  Because  of  cer- 
tain common  features  we  are  led  to  infer  a  still  greater  like- 
ness. 

Both  enumerative  induction  and  analogy  are  explicable 
in  terms  of  habit.  We  saw  in  our  examination  of  enume- 
rative induction  that  a  form  of  reaction  gains  strength 
through  a  series  of  successful  applications.  Analogy  marks 
the  presence  of  an  identical  element  together  with  the  ten- 
dency to  extend  this  "partial  identity"  (as  it  is  commonly 
called)  still  farther.  In  other  words,  in  analogy  it  is  sug- 
gested that  a  type  of  reaction  which  is  the  same  in  certain 
respects  may  be  made  similar  in  a  greater  degree.  In  enu- 
merative induction  we  lay  stress  on  the  number  of  instances 
in  which  the  habit  is  applied.  In  analogy  we  emphasize  the 
content  side  and  take  note  of  the  partial  identity.  In  fact, 
the  relation  between  enumerative  induction  and  analogy  is 
of  the  same  sort  as  that  existing  between  association  by  con- 
tiguity and  association  by  similarity.  In  association  by 
contiguity  we  think  of  the  things  associated  as  merely  stand- 
ing in  certain  temporal  or  spatial  relations,  and  disregard  the 
fact  that  they  were  elements  in  a  larger  experience.  In  case 
of  association,,  by  similarity  we  regard  the  like  feature  in  the 
things  associated  as  a  basis  for  further  correction. 

In  conversion  of  propositions  we  try  to  reverse  the  direc- 
tion of  the  reaction,  so  to  speak,  and  thereby  to  free  the  habit, 
to  get  a  mode  of  response  so  generalized  as  to  act  with  a 
minimum  cue.  For  instance,  we  can  deal  with  A  in  a 
way  called  B,  or,  in  other  words,  in  the  same  way  that 
we  did  with  other  things  called  B.  If  we  say,  "Man  is 
an  animal,"  then  to  a  certain  extent  the  term  "animal" 
signifies  the  way  in  which  we  regard  "man."  But  the 
question  arises  whether  we  can  regard  all  animals  as  we 
do  man.  Evidently  not,  for  the  reaction  which  is  fitting  in 


THE  NATUBE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  177 

case  of  animals  would  be  only  partially  applicable  to  man. 
With  the  animals  that  are  also  men  we  have  the  beginning 
of  a  habit  which,  if  unchecked,  would  lead  to  a  similar  reac- 
tion toward  all  animals,  i.e.,  we  would  say:  "All  animals 
are  men."  Man  may  be  said  to  be  the  richer  concept,  in 
that  only  a  part  of  the  reaction  which  determines  an  object 
to  be  a  man  is  required  to  designate  it  as  an  animal.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  start  with  animal,  then  (except  in  case 
of  the  animals  which  are  men)  there  is  lacking  the  subject- 
matter  which  would  permit  the  fuller  concept  to  be  applied. 
By  supplying  the  conditions  under  which  animal  =  man  we 
get  a  reversible  habit.  The  equation  of  technical  science  has 
just  this  character.  It  represents  the  maximum  freeing  or 
abstraction  of  a  predicate  qua  predicate,  and  thereby  multi- 
plies the  possible  applications  of  it  to  subjects  of  future 
judgments,  and  lessens  the  amount  of  shearing  away  of 
irrelevancies  and  of  re-adaptation  necessary  when  so  used 
in  any  particular  case. 

Formation  and  test  of  the  hypothesis. — The  formation  of 
the  hypothesis  is  commonly  regarded  as  essentially  different 
from  the  process  of  testing,  which  it  subsequently  under- 
goes. We  are  said  to  observe  facts,  invent  hypotheses,  and 
then  test  them.  The  hypothesis  is  not  required  for  our  pre- 
liminary observations;  and  some  writers,  regarding  the 
hypothesis  as  a  formulation  which  requires  a  difficult  and 
elaborate  test,  decline  to  admit  as  hypotheses  those  more 
simple  suppositions,  which  are  readily  confirmed  or  rejected. 
A  very  good  illustration  of  this  point  of  view  is  met  with  in 
Wundt's  discussion  of  the  hypothesis,  by  an  examination  of 
which  we  hope  to  show  that  such  distinctions  are  rather  arti- 
ficial than  real. 

The  subject-matter  of  science,  says  Wundt,1  is  constituted 
by  that  which  is  actually  given  and  that  which  is  actually  to 

i-Qp.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  452  ff» 


178  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

be  expected.  The  whole  content  is  not  limited  to  this, 
however,  for  these  facts  must  be  supplemented  by  certain 
presuppositions,  which  are  not  given  in  a  factual  sense. 
Such  presuppositions  are  called  hypotheses  and  are  justified 
by  our  fundamental  demand  for  unity.  However  valuable 
the  hypothesis  may  be  when  rightly  used,  there  is  constant 
danger  of  illegitimately  extending  it  by  additions  that  spring 
from  mere  inclinations  of  fancy.  Furthermore,  the  hypothe- 
sis in  this  proper  scientific  sense  must  be  carefully  dis- 
tinguished from  the  various  inaccurate  uses,  which  are 
prevalent.  For  instance,  hypotheses  must  not  be  confused 
with  expectations  of  fact.  As  cases  in  point  Wundt  men- 
tions Galileo's  suppositions  that  small  vibrations  of  the 
pendulum  are  isochronous,  and  that  the  space  traversed  by 
a  falling  body  is  proportional  to  the  square  of  the  time  it 
has  been  falling.  It  is  true  that  such  anticipations  play  an 
important  part  in  science,  but  so  long  as  they  relate  to  the 
facts  themselves  or  to  their  connections,  and  can  be  con- 
firmed or  rejected  any  moment  through  observation,  they 
should  not  be  classed  with  those  added  presuppositions 
which  are  used  to  co-ordinate  facts.  Hence  not  all  supposi- 
tions are  hypotheses.  On  the  other  hand,  not  every 
hypothesis  can  be  actually  experienced.  For  example,  one 
employs  in  physics  the  hypothesis  of  electric  fluid,  but  does 
not  expect  actually  to  meet  with  it.  In  many  cases,  how- 
ever, the  hypothesis  becomes  proved  as  an  experienced  fact. 
Such  was  the  course  of  the  Copernican  theory,  which  was  at 
first  only  a  hypothesis,  but  was  transformed  into  fact 
through  the  evidence  afforded  by  subsequent  astronomical 
observation. 

Wundt  defines  a  theory  as  a  hypothesis  taken  together 
with  the  facts  for  whose  elucidation  it  was  invented.  In 
thus  establishing  a  connection  between  the  facts  which  the 
hypothesis  merely  suggested,  the  theory  furnishes  at  the 


THE  NATUKE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  179 

same  time  partly  the  foundation  (Begrundung)  and  partly 
the  confirmation  (Bestatigung)  of  the  hypothesis.1  These 
aspects,  Wundt  insists,  must  be  sharply  distinguished. 
Every  hypothesis  must  have  its  Begrundung,  but  there  can 
be  Bestdtigung  only  in  so  far  as  the  hypothesis  contains 
elements  which  are  accessible  to  actual  processes  of  verifica- 
tion. In  most  cases  verification  is  attainable  in  only  cer- 
tain elements  of  the  hypothesis.  For  example,  Newton  was 
obliged  to  limit  himself  to  one  instance  in  the  verification  of 
his  theory  of  gravitation,  viz.,  the  movements  of  the  moon. 
The  other  heavenly  bodies  afforded  nothing  better  than  a 
foundation  in  that  the  supposition  that  gravity  decreases  as 
the  square  of  the  distance  increases  enabled  him  to  deduce 
the  movements  of  the  planets.  The  main  object  of  his 
theory,  however,  lay  in  the  deduction  of  these  movements 
and  not  in  the  proof  of  universal  gravity.  With  the  Dar- 
winian theory,  on  the  contrary,  the  main  interest  is  in  seek- 
ing its  verification  through  examination  of  actual  cases  of 
development.  Thus,  while  the  Newtonian  and  the  greater 
part  of  the  other  physical  theories  lead  to  a  deduction  of 
the  facts  from  the  hypotheses,  which  can  be  verified  only 
in  individual  instances,  the  Darwinian  theory  is  concerned 
in  evolving  as  far  as  possible  the  hypothesis  out  of  the 
facts. 

Let  us  look  more  closely  at  Wundt' s  position.  We  will 
ask,  first,  whether  the  distinction  between  hypotheses  and 
expectations  is  as  pronounced  as  he  maintains;  and,  second, 
whether  the  relation  between  Begrundung  and  Best&tigung 
may  not  be  closer  than  Wundt  would  have  us  believe. 

As  examples  of  the  hypothesis  Wundt  mentions  the 
Copernican  hypothesis,  Newton's  hypothesis  of  gravitation, 
and  the  predictions  of  the  astronomers  which  led  to  the  dis- 
covery of  Neptune.  As  examples  of  mere  expectations  we 

1  Op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  454-461. 


180  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

are  referred  to  Galileo's  experiments  with  falling  bodies  and 
pendulums.  In  case  of  Newton's  hypothesis  there  was  the 
assumption  of  a  general  law,  which  was  verified  after  much 
labor  and  delay.  The  heliocentric  hypothesis  of  Coperni- 
cus, which  was  invented  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  system 
and  unity  into  the  movements  of  the  planets,  has  also  been 
fairly  well  substantiated.  In  the  discovery  of  Neptune  we 
have,  apparently,  not  the  proof  of  a  general  law  or  the  dis- 
covery of  further  peculiarities  of  previously  known  data,  but 
rather  the  discovery  of  a  new  object  or  agent  by  means  of 
its  observed  effects.  In  each  of  these  instances  we  admit 
that  the  hypothesis  was  not  readily  suggested  or  easily 
and  directly  tested. 

If  we  turn  to  Galileo's  pendulum  and  falling  bodies,  it  is 
clear  first  of  all  that  he  did  not  have  in  mind  the  discovery 
of  some  object,  as  was  the  case  in  the  discovery  of  Neptune. 
Did  he,  then,  either  contribute  to  the  proof  of  a  general  law 
or  discover  further  characteristics  of  things  already  known 
in  a  more  general  way  ?  Wundt  tells  us  that  Galileo  only 
determined  a  little  more  exactly  what  he  already  knew,  and 
that  he  did  this  with  but  little  labor  or  delay. 

What,  then,  is  the  real  difference  between  hypothesis  and 
expectation-?  If  we  compare  Galileo's  determination  of  the 
law  of  falling  bodies  with  Newton's  test  of  his  hypothesis  of 
gravitation,  we  see  that  both  expectation  and  hypothesis 
were  founded  on  observation  and  took  the  form  of  mathe- 
matical formulae.  Each  tended  to  confirm  the  general  law 
expressed  in  its  formula,  though  there  was,  of  course,  much 
difference  in  the  time  and  labor  required.  If  we  compare 
the  Copernican  hypothesis  with  Galileo's  supposition  con- 
cerning the  pendulum,  we  find  again  that  they  agree  in 
regard  to  general  purpose  and  method,  and  differ  in  the 
difficulty  of  verification.  If  the  experiment  with  the  pen- 
dulum only  substituted  exactness  for  inexactness,  did  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  181 

Copernican  theory  do  anything  different  in  kind  9  It  is  true 
that  the  more  exact  statement  of  the  swing  of  the  pendulum 
was  expressed  in  quantitative  form,  but  quantitative  state- 
ment is  no  criterion  of  either  the  presence  or  the  absence  of 
the  hypothesis. 

Again,  we  may  compare  the  pendulum  with  Kepler's  laws. 
What  was  Kepler's  hypothesis,  that  the  square  of  the  periodic 
times  of  the  several  planets  are  proportional  to  the  cubes  of 
their  mean  distances  from  the  sun,  except  a  more  exact  for- 
mulation of  facts  which  were  already  known  in  a  more  gen- 
eral way?  Wundt's  position  seems  to  be  this:  whenever  a 
supposition  or  suggestion  can  be  tested  readily,  it  should 
not  be  classed  as  a  hypothesis.  This  would  make  the  dis- 
tinction one  of  degree  rather  than  kind,  and  it  does  not 
appear  how  much  labor  we  must  expend,  or  how  long  our 
supposition  must  evade  our  efforts  to  test  it,  before  it  can 
win  the  title  of  hypothesis. 

In  the  second  place,  we  have  seen  that  Wundt  draws  a 
sharp  line  between  Begriindung  and  Best&tigung.  It  is 
doubtless  true  that  every  hypothesis  requires  a  certain  justi- 
fication, for  unless  other  facts  can  be  found  which  agree 
with  deductions  made  in  accordance  with  it,  its  only  sup- 
port would  be  the  data  from  which  it  is  drawn.  Such  sup- 
port as  this  would  be  obtained  through  a  process  too  clearly 
circular  to  be  seriously  entertained.  The  distinction  which 
Wundt  draws  between  Begriindung  and  Bestatigung  is 
evidently  due  to  the  presence  of  the  experimental  element 
in  the  latter.  For  descriptive  purposes  this  distinction  is 
useful,  but  is  misleading  if  it  is  understood  to  mean  that 
there  is  mere  experience  in  one  case  and  mere  inference  in  the 
other.  The  difference  is  rather  due  to  the  relative  parts  played 
by  inference  and  by  accepted  experience  in  each.  In  Begriin- 
dung the  inferential  feature  is  the  more  prominent,  while  in 
Bestatigung  the  main  emphasis  is  on  the  experiential  aspect. 


182  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  either  of  these 
aspects  can  be  wholly  absent.  It  is  difficult  to  understand 
how  any  hypothesis  can  be  entertained  at  all  unless  it  meets 
in  some  measure  the  demand  with  reference  to  which  it  was 
invented,  viz.,  a  unification  of  conflicts  in  experience.  And, 
in  so  far,  it  is  confirmed.  The  motive  which  casts  doubt 
upon  its  adequacy  is  the  same  that  leads  to  its  re-forming 
as  a  hypothesis,  as  a  mental  concept. 

The  difficulties  in  Wundt's  position  are  thus  due  to  a 
failure  to  take  account  of  the  reconstructive  nature  of  the 
judgment.  The  predicate,  supposition,  or  hypothesis,  what- 
ever we  may  choose  to  call  it,  is  formed  because  of  the  check 
of  a  former  habit.  The  'judgment  is  an  ideal  application  of 
a  new  habit,  and  its  test  is  the  attempt  to  act  in  accordance 
with  this  ideal  reconstruction.  It  must  not  be  thought,  how- 
ever, that  our  supposition  is  first  fully  developed  and  then 
tried  and  accepted  or  rejected  without  modification.  On 
the  contrary,  its  growth  is  the  result  of  successive  minor 
tests  and  corresponding  minor  modifications  in  its  form. 
Formation  and  test  are  merely  convenient  distinctions  in  a 
larger  process  in  which  forming,  testing,  and  re-forming  go 
on  together.  The  activity  of  experimental  verification  is  not 
only  a  testing,  a  confirming  or  weakening  of  the  validity  of 
a  hypothesis,  but  it  is  equally  well  an  evolution  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  hypothesis  through  bringing  it  into  closer  rela- 
tions with  specific  data  not  previously  included  in  defining 
its  import.  Per  contra,  a  purely  reflective  and  deductive 
consideration  which  develops  the  idea  as  hypothesis,  in 
so  far  as  it  introduces  the  determinateness  of  previously 
accepted  facts  within  the  scope,  comprehension,  or  intension 
of  the  idea,  is  in  so  far  forth,  a  verification. 

If  the  view  which  we  have  maintained  is  correct,  the  hypo- 
thesis is  not  to  be  limited  to  those  elaborate  formulations  of 
the  scientist  which  he  seeks  to  confirm  by  crucial  tests.  The 


THE  NATURE  OF  HYPOTHESIS  183 

hypothesis  of  the  investigator  differs  from  the  comparatively 
rough  conjecture  of  the  plain  man  only  in  its  greater  preci- 
sion. Indeed,  as  we  have  attempted  to  show,  the  hypothesis 
is  not  a  method  which  we  may  employ  or  not  as  we  choose; 
on  the  contrary,  as  predicate  of  the  judgment  it  is  present 
in  a  more  or  less  explicit  form  if  we  judge  at  all.  Whether 
the  time  and  labor  required  for  its  confirmation  or  rejection 
is  a  matter  of  a  lifetime  or  a  moment,  its  nature  remains  the 
same.  Its  function  is  identical  with  that  of  the  predicate. 
In  short,  the  hypothesis  is  the  predicate  so  brought  to  con- 
sciousness and  defined  that  those  features  which  are  not 
noticed  in  the  ordinary  judgment  are  brought  into  promi- 
nence. We  then  recognize  the  hypothesis  to  be  what  in 
fact  the  predicate  always  is,  viz.,  a  method  of  organization 
and  control. 


VIII 

IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC 

THE  logic  of  sense-impressions  and  of  ideas  as  copies  of 
sense-impressions  has  had  its  day.  It  engaged  in  a  conflict 
with  dogmatism,  and  scored  a  decisive  victory.  It  over- 
threw the  dynasty  of  prescribed  formula  and  innate  ideas, 
of  ideas  derived  ready-made  from  custom  and  social  usage, 
ancient  enough  to  be  lost  in  the  remote  obscurity  of  divine 
sources;  and  enthroned  in  their  place  idea~s  derived  fromr 
and  representative  of,  the  sense-experiences  of  a  very  real 
and  present  world.  It  marked  a  reaction  from  dogma  back 
to  the  original  meaning  of  dogma,  back  to  the  seeming,  the 
appearance,  of  things.  So  thoroughly  did  Bacon  and  Hobbes, 
Locke  and  Hume,  to  mention  only  these  four,  do  their  work, 
that  many  of  the  problems  growing  out  of  the  conflict  itself, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  scholastic  traditions  that  were  com- 
bated, have  come  to  have  merely  a  historical  rather  than  a 
logical  interest.  Logic  no  longer  concerns  itself  very 
eagerly  witji  the  content  or  sensuous  qualities  of  ideas,  with 
their  derivation  from  sense-impressions,  or  with  questions  as 
to  the  relation  of  copy  to  original,  of  representative  to  that 
which  is  presented.  It  is  concerned  rather  with  the  con- 
structive operations  of  thought,  with  meaning,  reference  to 
reality,  inference — with  intellectual  processes.  Perhaps  in 
no  respect  is  this  shifting  of  logical  standpoint  indicated 
more  clearly  than  in  the  unregretful  way  with  which  the  old 
logical  interest  in  the  sense-qualities  of  ideas  is  now  made 
over  to  psychology.  States  of  consciousness  as  such,  we  are 
told,  are  the  proper  study  of  psychology ;  whereas  logic  con- 
cerns itself  with  the  relation  of  thought  to  its  object.  True, 

184 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  185 

these  states  of  consciousness  include  thought-states,  as  well 
as  sense-impressions ;  ideas  and  concepts,  as  well  as  feelings 
and  fancies;  and  the  business  of  psychology  is  to  observe, 
compare  and  classify,  describe  and  chronicle,  these  states 
and  whatever  else  is  carried  along  in  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness. But  logic  is  concerned,  not  with  these  states  of  con- 
sciousness per  se,  least  of  all  with  the  flotsam  and  jetsam  of 
the  stream,  but  with  its  reference  to  reality;  not  with  the 
true,  but  with  truth ;  not  even  with  what  consciousness  does, 
but  with  how  consciousness  is  to  outdo  itself,  transcend  itself, 
in  a  rational  and  universal  whole.  Even  an  empirical  logic 
has  to  arrange  somehow  the  way  to  get  from  one  sense- 
impression  to  another. 

In  drawing  this  distinction  between  logic  and  psychology 
— a  distinction  which  virtually  amounts  to  a  separation — two 
things  are  overlooked:  first,  that  the  distinction  itself  is  a 
logical  distinction,  and  may  properly  constitute  a  problem 
falling  under  the  province  of  logical  inquiry  and  theory; 
and,  second,  that  the  rather  arbitrary  and  official  setting 
apart  of  psychology  to  look  after  the  task  of  studying  states 
of  consciousness  does  not  carry  with  it  the  guarantee  that 
psychology  will  confine  itself  exclusively  to  that  task.  This 
last  point  in  particular  must  be  my  excuse  for  discussing  the 
question  of  image  and  idea  from  the  psychological  rather 
than  from  the  logical  standpoint.  The  logic  of  ideas  derived 
from  sense-impressions  'has  had  its  day.  But  even  the  very 
leavings  of  the  past  may  have  been  gathered  up  and  recon- 
structed by  psychology  in  such  a  way  as  to  anticipate  some 
of  the  newer  developments  of  logical  theory  and  meet  some 
of  its  difficulties.  One  can  hardly  hope  to  justify  in  advance 
a  discussion  based  on  such  a  sheer  possibility.  Let  us  begin, 
rather,  by  noting  down  from  the  standpoint  of  logic  some  of 
the  distinctions  between  image  and  idea,  and  the  estimate 
of  the  logical  function  and  value  of  mental  imagery,  and  see 


186  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

in  what  direction  they  take  us  and  whether  they  suggest  a 
resort  to  an  analysis  from  the  standpoint  of  psychology. 

Proceeding  from  the  standpoint  of  logic  to  inquire  into 
the  logical  function  of  mental  imagery  and  into  the  distinc- 
tion between  image  and  idea,  we  shall  come  upon  two 
opposed  but  characteristic  answers.  If  the  inquiry  be 
directed  to  a  member  of  the  empirical  school  of  logic,  he 
would  be  bound  to  answer  in  the  affirmative,  so  far  as  the 
question  regarding  the  function  of  mental  imagery  is  con- 
cerned. He  would  be  likely  to  say,  if  he  were  loyal  to  the 
traditions  of  his  school,  that  mental  imagery  is  the  counter- 
part of  sense-perception,  and  is  thus  the  representative  of  the 
data  with  which  empirical  logic  is  concerned.  Mental 
imagery,  he  would  continue,  is  a  representative  in  a  literal 
sense,  a  copy,  a  reflection,  of  what  comes  to  us  through  the 
avenues  of  sensation.  True,  it  is  not  the  perfect  twin  of 
sense-experience ;  else  we  could  not  tell  them  apart ;  indeed, 
there  are  times  when  the  copy  becomes  so  much  like  the 
original  that  we  are  deceived  by  it,  as  in  dreams  or  in 
hallucinations.  Ordinarily,  however,  we  are  able  to  distin- 
guish one  from  the  other.  Two  criteria  are  usually  present ; 
(1)  imagery  is  fainter,  more  fleeting,  than  the  corresponding 
sense-experience;  and  (2),  save  in  the  case  of  accurate 
memory-images,  it  is  subject  to  a  more  or  less  arbitrary 
rearrangement  of  its  parts,  as  when,  for  example,  we  make 
over  the  images  of  scenes  we  have  actually  experienced,  to 
furnish  forth  the  setting  of  some  remote  historical  event. 

Barring,  or  controlling  and  rectifying,  its  tendencies 
toward  both  arbitrary  and  constructive  variations  from 
the  original,  mental  imagery  is  on  the  same  level  as 
sense-experience,  and  serves  the  same  logical  purpose. 
That  is  to  say,  it  contributes  to  the  data  which  consti- 
tute the  foundations  of  empirical  logic.  It  furnishes  mate- 
rials for  the  operations  of  observing,  comparing,  abstracting 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  187 

and  generalizing.  Mental  imagery  helps  to  piece  out  the 
fragments  that  may  be  presented  to  sense-experience.  It 
supplies  the  entire  anatomy  when  only  a  single  bone,  say, 
is  actually  given.  Yet,  however  useful  as  a  servant  of  truth, 
it  has  to  be  carefully  watched,  lest  its  spontaneous  tendency 
to  vary  the  actual  order  and  coexistence  of  data  lead  the 
investigator  astray.  The  copy  it  presents  is,  after  all,  a 
temporary  makeshift,  until  it  can  be  shown  to  correspond 
point  for  point  to  the  now  absent  reality.  Mental  imagery 
furnishes  one  with  an  illustrated  edition  of  the  book  of 
nature,  but  the  illustrations  await  the  confirmation  of  com- 
parison with  the  originals. 

Mental  imagery  functions  logically  when  it  extends  the 
area  of  data  beyond  the  range  of  the  immediate  sense-per- 
ceptions of  any  given  time,  and  thus  makes  possible  a  more 
comprehensive  application  of  the  empirical  methods  of 
observation,  comparison,  abstraction,  and  generalization.  It 
functions  logically  when  it  acts  as  a  feeder  of  logical 
machinery,  though  it  is  not  indispensable  to  this  machinery 
and  does  not  modify  its  principles.  The  logical  mill  could 
grind  up  in  the  same  way  the  pure  grain  of  sense-percep- 
tions, unmixed  with  mental  images,  but  it  would  have  to 
grind  more  slowly  for  lack  of  material.  In  other  words, 
empirical  logic  could  carry  on  its  operations  of  observing, 
comparing,  abstracting,  and  generalizing,  solely  on  the  basis 
of  objects  or  data  present  to  the  senses,  and  with  no  exten- 
sion of  this  basis  in  terms  of  imagery,  or  copies  of  objects 
not  immediately  present ;  but  it  would  take  more  time  for  it 
to  apply  and  carry  through  its  operations.  The  logical 
machinery  is  the  same  in  each  case.  The  materials  fed  and 
the  product  issuing  are  the  same  in  each  case.  Imagery 
simply  fulfils  the  function  of  providing  a  more  copious  grist. 

The  empiricist's  answer  to  our  question  regarding  the 
logical  function  of  mental  imagery  leaves  that  function  in  an 


188  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

uncertain  and  parlous  state.  Imagery  lacks  the  security  of 
sense-perception  on  the  one  hand,  and  it  has  no  part  in  the 
operation  of  thought  on  the  other.  It  is  a  sort  of  hod-car- 
rier, whose  function  it  is  to  convey  the  raw  materials  of 
sense-perception  to  a  more  exalted  position  where  someone 
else  does  all  the  work.  I  suppose  this  could  be  called  a 
functional  interpretation  of  a  logical  element.  The  ques- 
tion, then,  would  be  whether  an  element  so  functioning  is 
in  any  sense  logical.  As  an  element  lying  outside  of  the 
thought- process  it  owes  no  responsibility  to  logic;  it  is  not 
amenable  to  its  regulations.  Thought  simply  finds  it  expe- 
dient to  operate  with  an  agent  over  which  it  has  no  intrinsic 
control.  The  case  might*  be  allowed  to  rest  here.  Yet  were 
this  extra-logical  element  of  imagery  to  abandon  thought, 
all  conscious  thinking  as  opposed  to  sense-perception  would 
cease.  A  false  alarm,  perhaps.  Imagery  may  be  so  consti- 
tuted that  it  is  inseparably  subordinated  to  thought  and  can 
never  abandon  it.  Thought  may  simply  exude  imagery. 
But  imagery  somehow  has  to  represent  sense-perception, 
also.  It  can  hardly  be  a  secretion  of  thought  and  a  copy  of 
sense-perceptions  at  one  and  the  same  time,  unless  the 
empiricist  is  willing  to  turn  absolute  idealist !  Before  tak- 
ing such  a  clesperate  plunge  as  this,  it  might  be  desirable  to 
see  whether  there  is  any  other  recourse. 

There  is  another  and  a  very  different  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion regarding  the  logical  function  of  mental  imagery.  To 
distinguish  this  answer  from  that  of  the  associationist  or 
empiricist,  I  will  call  it  the  answer  of  the  conceptualist.  I 
am  not  at  all  positive  that  this  label  would  stick  even  to 
those  to  whom  it  might  be  applied  with  considerable  justifi- 
cation. The  terms  "  rationalistic "  and  "  transcendental " 
might  be  preferred  in  opposition  to  the  term  "empirical." 
And  we  have  the  term  "  apperceptionist "  in  opposition  to 
the  term  "  associationist."  If  the  term  "conceptualist"  is 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  189 

admissible,  it  should  be  brought  down  to  date,  perhaps,  by 
making  it  "neo-conceptualist."  The  present  difficulties 
regarding  terminology  would  be  eased  considerably  if  we 
only  had  a  convenient  set  of  derivatives  made  from  the  word 
"  meaning."  Since  we  have  not,  I' will  use  derivatives  made 
from  the  word  "concept"  to  denote  views  opposite  to  those 
held  by  the  empirical  school. 

The  concept nalist  could  be  depended  upon  to  answer  our 
question  in  the  negative.  Logical  functions  begin  where 
the  image  leaves  off.  They  begin  with  the  idea,  with  mean- 
ing. The  conceptualist  distinguishes  sharply  between  the 
image  as  a  psychical  existence  and  the  idea,  or  concept,  as 
logical  meaning.  On  the  one  hand,  you  have  the  "image," 
not  only  as  a  mere  psychical  existence,  but  a  mocking  exist- 
ence at  that,  fleeting,  inconstant,  shifting,  never  perhaps 
twice  alike ;  yet,  mind  you,  an  existence,  a  fact — that  must 
be  admitted.  On  the  other  hand,  you  have  the  "  idea,"  with 
"  a  fixed  content  or  logical  meaning," J  which  is  referred  by 
an  act  of  judgment  to  a  reality  beyond  the  act.2 

The  "  idea,"  the  logical  meaning,  begins  where  the 
"image"  leaves  off.  Does  this  mean  that  the  "idea"  is 
wholly  independent  of  the  "image"?  Yes  and  no.  The 
"  idea  "  is  independent  of  that  which  is  ordinarily  regarded 
as  the  special  characteristic  of  an  "image,"  namely,  its 
quality,  its  sense-content.  That  is  to  say,  the  "  idea "  is 
independent  of  any  particular  "  image,"  any  special  embodi- 
ment of  sense-content.  Any  image  will  do.  As  Mr.  Bosan- 
quet  remarks  in  comparing  the  psychical  images  that  pass 
through  our  minds  to  a  store  of  signal  flags : 

Not  only  is  it  indifferent  whether  your  signal  flag  of  today  is 
the  same  bit  of  cloth  that  you  hoisted  yesterday,  but  also,  no  one 
knows  or  cares  whether  it  is  clean  or  dirty,  thick  or  thin,  frayed  or 

1  BOSANQUET,  Logic,  Vol.  I,  p.  46. 

2  BRADLEY,  Principles  of  Logic,  p.  10. 


190  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

smooth,  as  long  as  it  is  distinctly  legible  as  an  element  of  the  sig- 
nal code.  Part  of  its  content,  of  its  attributes  and  relations,  is  a 
fixed  index  which  carries  a  distinct  reference;  all  the  rest  is 
nothing  to  us,  and,  except  in  a  moment  of  idle  curiosity,  we  are 
unaware  that  it  exists.1 

On  the  other  hand,  the  "idea"  could  not  operate  as  an 
idea,  could  not  be  in  consciousness,  save  as  it  involves  some 
imagery,  however  old,  dirty,  thin,  and  frayed.  Take  the 
statement,  "The  angles  of  a  triangle  are  equal  to  two  right 
angles."  If  the  statement  means  anything  to  a  given  indi- 
vidual, if  it  conveys  an  idea,  it  must  necessarily  involve  some 
form  of  imagery,  some  qualitative  or  conscious  content. 
But  so  far  as  the  meaning  is  concerned,  it  is  a  matter  of 
complete  indifference  as  to  what  qualities  are  involved. 
These  qualities  may  be  in  terms  of  visual,  auditory,  tactual, 
kinsesthetic,  or  verbal  imagery.  The  individual  may  visual- 
ize a  blackboard  drawing  of  a  triangle  with  its  sides  pro- 
duced, or  he  may  imagine  himself  to  be  generating  a 
triangle  while  revolving  through  an  angle  of  180°.  Any 
imagery  anyone  pleases  may  be  employed,  so  ,long  as  there 
goes  with  it  somehow  the  idea  of  the  relation  of  equality 
between  the  angles  of  a  triangle  and  two  right  angles.  But 
the  conceptualist  does  not  stop  here.  The  act  of  judgment 
comes  in  to  affirm  that  the  "  idea  "  is  no  mere  idea,  but  is  a 
quality  of  the  real.  "  The  act  [of  judgment]  attaches  the 
floating  adjective  [the  idea,  the  logical  meaning]  to  the 
nature  of  the  world,  and,  at  the  same  time,  tells  one  it  was 
there  already."2  The  "idea,"  the  logical  meaning,  begins 
where  the  "  image "  leaves  off.  Yet,  somehow,  the  "idea" 
could  not  begin,  unless  there  were  an  "  image  "  to  leave  off. 
An  "image"  is  not  an  "idea,"  says  the  conceptualist. 
An  "idea"  is  not  an  "image."  (1)  An  "image"  is  not  an 
"idea,"  because  an  "image"  is  a  particular,  individual  frag  - 

i  Op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  74.  2  BEADLEY,  Principles  of  Logic,  p.  11. 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  191 

ment  of  consciousness.  It  is  so  bound  up  with  its  own 
existence  that  it  cannot  reach  out  to  the  existence  of  an 
"  idea,"  or  to  anything  beyond  itself.  Chemically  speaking, 
it  is  an  avalent  atom  of  consciousness,  if  such  a  thing  is 
thinkable.  Mr.  Bosanquet  raises  the  question: 

Are  there  at  all  ideas  which  are  not  symbolic?  ....  The 
answer  is  that  (a)  in  judgment  itself  the  idea  can  be  distinguished 
qua  particular  in  time  or  psychical  fact,  and  so  far  is  not  sym- 
bolic ;  and  (6)  in  all  those  human  experiences  from  which  we  draw 
our  conjectures  as  to  the  animal  intelligence,  when  in  languor  or 
in  ignorance  image  succeeds  image  without  conscious  judgment,  we 
feel  what  it  is  to  have  ideas  as  facts  and  not  as  symbols.1 

(2)  An  "idea"  is  not  an  "image,"  because  an  idea  is  mean- 
ing, which  consists  in  a  part  of  the  content  of  the  image, 
cut  off,  and  considered  apart  from  the  existence  of  the  con- 
tent or  sign  itself.2  This  meaning,  this  fragment  of 
psychical  existence,  lays  down  all  claim  to  existence  on  its 
own  account,  that  it  may  refer  through  an  act  of  judgment 
to  a  reality  beyond  itself  and  beyond  the  act  also.  An 
"  image "  is  not  an  "  idea "  and  an  "  idea "  is  not  an 
"image,"  because  an  "image"  exists  only  as  a  quality,  a 
sense-content,  whereas  an  "  idea  "  exists  only  as  a  relation, 
a  reference  to  reality  beyond.  "  On  the  one  hand,"  to  recall 
Bradley 's  antinomy,  "no  possible  idea  [as  a  psychical 

image]  can  be  that  which  it  means On  the  other 

hand,  no  idea  [as  logical  signification]  is  anything  but  just 
what  it  means." 

There  is  a  significant  point  of  agreement  between  the 
conceptualist  and  the  empiricist.  Both  regard  imagery  as 
on  the  level  with  sense-perception.  For  the  empiricist,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  fact  that  imagery  may  be  compelled  to 
serve  as  a  yoke-fellow  of  sense-experience  constitutes  its 
logical  value.  For  the  conceptualist,  however,  the  associa- 

i  Op.  cit.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  75,  76.  2  BEADLEY,  op.  cit.,  pp.  4-6. 


192  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

tion  of  imagery  with  sense-experience  is  of  no  logical  conse- 
quence whatsoever,  save  as  it  may  help  to  intensify  the 
distinction  between  imagery  and  meaning.  To  quote  again 
from  Bradley : 

For  logical  purposes  the  psychological  distinction  of  idea  and 
sensation  may  be  said  to  be  irrelevant,  while  the  distinction  of  idea 
and  fact  is  vital.  The  image,  or  psychological  idea,  is  for  logic 
nothing  but  a  sensible  reality.  It  is  on  a  level  with  the  mere  sen- 
sations of  the  senses.  For  both  are  facts  and  neither  are  meanings. 
Neither  are  cut  from  a  mutilated  presentation  and  fixed  as  a  con- 
nection. Neither  are  indifferent  to  their  place  in  the  stream  of 
psychical  events,  their  time  and  their  relations  to  the  presented 
congeries.  Neither  are  adjectives  to  be  referred  from  their  exist- 
ence, to  live  on  strange  soils,  under  other  skies,  and  through 
changing  seasons.  The  lives  of  both  are  so  entangled  with  their 
environment,  so  one  with  their  setting  of  sensuous  particulars,  that 
their  character  is  destroyed  if  but  one  thread  is  broken.1 

This  point  of  agreement  between  conceptualism  and 
empiricism,  this  placing  of  imagery  and  sense-experience  on 
a  common  level,  serves  to  bring  into  relief  fundamental  dif- 
ferences between  the  two  schools  of  thought;  fundamental, 
because  they  have  to  do  with  the  nature  of  reality  itself. 
The  conceptualist  in  his  zealous  endeavor  to  distinguish 
between  imagery  and  logical  meaning  has  come  perilously 
near  driving  imagery  into  the  arms  of  reality.  It  is  the 
opportunity  of  empiricism  to  make  them  one.  How  can 
conceptualism  prevent  the  union?  Has  it  not  disarmed 
itself  ?  The  act  of  judgment,  which  includes  within  itself 
logical  meaning  as  predicate,  refers  to  a  reality  beyond  the 
act.  Both  imagery  and  reality,  then,  lie  outside  of  the  act 
of  judgment !  What  alliance,  or  mesalliance,  may  they  not 
form,  one  with  the  other? 

The  difficulties  we  have  noted  thus  far  in  the  discussion 
are  due  to  a  large  extent,  I  believe,  to  incomplete  psychologi- 

1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  7,  8. 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  193 

cal  analysis  of  logical  machinery.  The  empiricist  has  not 
carried  the  psychology  of  logic  as  far  as  the  conceptualist, 
although  the  latter  might  be  the  loudest  to  disclaim  the 
honor.  I  will  not  try  to  prove  this  statement,  but  simply 
give  it  as  a  reason  why,  in  the  interest  of  brevity,  I  shall 
pass  with  little  comment  over  the  psychological  shortcomings 
and  contributions  of  empirical  logic,  and  devote  what  space 
remains  to  the  psychology  implicitly  worked  out  by  con- 
ceptual logic,  and  to  its  possible  development,  with  special 
reference,  of  course,  to  the  problem  of  the  logical  function 
of  imagery. 

The  logical  distinction,  which  practically  amounts  to  a 
separation  between  imagery  and  meaning,  is  the  counterpart  of 
the  psychological  distinction  between  stimulus  and  response, 
between  the  two  poles  of  sensori-motor  activity,  where  the 
stimulus  is  defined  in  consciousness  in  the  form  of  imagery, 
in  the  form  of  sense-qualities  centrally  excited,  and  where 
the  response  is  directed  and  controlled  via  this  imagery,  so 
as  to  function  in  bringing  some  end,  project,  purpose,  or 
ideal,  nearer  to  realization,  some  problem  nearer  to  solution. 

Psychologically,  there  is  no  break  between  image  and 
response,  between  thought  and  action.  The  stimulus  is  a 
condition  of  action,  in  both  senses  of  the  ambiguity  of  the 
word  " condition."  (1)  It  is  action;  it  is  a  state  or  condi- 
tion of  action.  (2)  It  is  also  an  initiation  of  action.  If  the 
appropriate  stimulus,  then  the  desired  action.  The  response 
to  an  image  is  the  meaning  of  the  image.  Or,  the  response 
to  any  stimulus  via  an  image — mediated,  controlled  or 
directed  by  an  image — is  the  meaning  of  that  image.  The 
less  imagery  involved  in  any  response,  the  greater  the  pre- 
sumption in  favor  of  the  belief  that  the  response  is  either 
an  instinctive  impulse  or  else  has  become  a  habit  of  mind,  an 
adequate  idea.  The  reduction  and  loss  of  sense-content 
which  an  image  may  undergo — the  wearing  away  of  an 


194  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

image,  it  is  sometimes  called — is  not  a  sign  that  this  sense- 
content  has  no  logical  function ;  but  rather  that  it  has  fulfilled 
a  logical  function  so  well  that  it  has  made  part  of  itself  use- 
less. The  husk,  to  recall  one  of  Mr.  Bradley's  comparisons, 
that  useless  husk,  tends  to  fall  away,  to  lapse  from  conscious- 
ness, after  it  has  served  the  purpose  of  helping  to  bring  the 
kernel  of  truth  to  fruition. 

This  raises  again  the  original  question  as  to  whether  the 
sense-content,  the  quality,  the  existential  quality,  of  an 
image  has  a  logical  function.  I  will  ask  first  whether  it  has 
a  function  from  the  standpoint  of  psychology.  We  will 
agree  with  the  empiricist  that  the  content  of  an  image  is 
representative,  that  it  is-  a  return,  a  revival,  of  a  sense-content 
previously  experienced  through  the  activity  of  sense-organs 
stimulated  from  the  periphery.  What  is  the  function,  then, 
of  the  representative  image  ?  Sensation,  quality,  as  we  have 
implied  above,  is  the  stimulus  come  to  consciousness.  To 
explain  how  a  stimulus  can  "come"  to  consciousness  is  a 
problem  I  will  not  attempt  to  go  into  here.  I  assume  as  a 
fact  that  there  are  times  when  we  know  what  we  are  about ; 
when  we  are  conscious  of  the  stimuli,  or  conditions  of  action, 
which  are  tending  in  this  direction  or  in  that,  and  when 
through  this  consciousness  we  exercise  a  controlling  influence 
over  action  by  selecting  and  reinforcing  certain  stimuli  and 
suppressing  or  inhibiting  others.  It  is  true  that  we  do  not 
always  realize  to  how  great  an  extent  our  actions  are  con- 
trolled by  stimuli  which  do  not  come  to  consciousness,  by 
reflexes,  instincts,  and  habits  which  do  not  rise  above  the 
threshold  of  imagery.  And  when  this  vast  complex  of  hid- 
den machinery  is  partly  revealed  to  us,  it  may  either  cause 
the  beholder  to  take  a  materialistic,  mechanical,  or  fatalistic 
view  of  existence,  to  say  that  we  are  the  victims  of  our  own 
machinery,  or  else  it  may  induce  the  other  extreme  of  more 
or  less  mystic  pronouncements  regarding  the  province  of  the 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC        195 

subconscious,  of  the  subliminal  self;  thus  out  of  partial 
views,  out  of  half-truths,  metaphysical  problems  arise  and 
arm  for  mutual  conflict.  Nevertheless,  there  is  a  presump- 
tion, amounting  in  most  minds  to  a  conviction,  that  we  do 
at  times  consciously  control  some  of  our  actions.  And  it  is 
only  making  this  conviction  a  little  more  explicit  to  say  that 
we  consciously  control  our  actions  through  becoming  aware 
of  the  stimuli,  or  conditions  of  action,  and  through  selecting 
and  reinforcing  them. 

Is  it  begging  the  question  to  speak  of  consciousness  as 
exercising  a  selective  function  with  reference  to  stimuli? 
From  the  standpoint  of  psychology,  I  cannot  see  that  it  is. 
No  characteristic  of  consciousness  has  been  more  clearly 
made  out,  both  reflectively  and  experimentally,  than  its 
selective  function,  than  its  ability  to  pick  out  and  intensify 
within  certain  limits  the  stimuli  or  conditions  of  action. 

The  representational  image  is  a  stimulus  come  to  con- 
sciousness in  the  same  way  that  a  sensation  is  a  stimulus 
come  to  consciousness.  It  is  both  a  direct  and  an  indirect 
stimulus.  The  terms  "direct"  and  "indirect"  are  used  as 
relative  solely  to  the  demands  of  the  particular  situation  out 
of  which  they  arise.  By  direct  stimulus  I  mean  a  stimulus 
which  initiates  with  almost  no  appreciable  delay  the  response 
or  attitude  appropriate  to  the  demands  of  a  given  situation, 
bridging  the  difficulties,  removing  the  obstacles,  or  solving 
the  problem  with  the  minimum  of  conscious  reflection.  As 
an  image  becomes  more  and  more  of  a  working  symbol,  an 
idea,  it  tends  to  become  simply  a  direct  stimulus. 

By  an  "indirect  stimulus"  is  meant  a  stimulus  initiating 
a  response  which,  if  not  inhibited,  would  be  irrelevant  to  the 
situation,  yet  which  may  represent  stimuli  which  are  not 
found  in  the  immediate  field  of  sense-perception,  and  which 
are  essential  to  the  carrying  on  of  the  activity.  The  situa- 
tion is  a  problematic  one,  Acquired  habits  or  mental 


196  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

adjustments  break  down  at  some  point  or  fail  to  operate 
smoothly,  either  owing  to  the  absence  of  customary  stimuli 
or  to  the  presence  of  new  and  untried  conditions  of  action. 
Part  of  the  stress  of  meeting  such  a  situation  as  this  falls  on 
the  side  of  discovering  appropriate  stimuli  and  part  on  the 
side  of  developing  out  of  habits  already  acquired  new 
methods  of  response. 

In  such  a  situation  as  this,  imagery  may  function  on  the 
side  of  stimulus  when,  taking  its  cue  from  the  stimuli  which 
are  actually  present,  and  which  grow  out  of  the  strain  and 
friction,  it  represents  the  missing  conditions  of  action  suffi- 
ciently to  direct  a  search  for  them.  It  projects  a  map,  so  to 
speak,  in  which  the  fragmentary  conditions  immediately 
present  to  sense-perception  may  find  their  bearings,  or  in 
which  in  some  way  the  missing  members  may  be  discovered. 
A  familiar  instance  of  this  would  be  the  experience  one 
sometimes  has  in  trying  to  recall  the  forgotten  name  of  an 
acquaintance.  The  images  of  scenes  associated  with  the 
acquaintance,  of  various  letters  and  sounds  of  words  associ- 
ated with  his  name,  which  may  be  called  to  mind,  do  not 
function  so  much  as  direct  stimuli  as  they  do  as  intermediate 
or  indirect  stimuli.  It  is  a  case  of  casting  about  for  the 
image  that  will  function  as  a  direct  stimulus  in  bringing  an 
acquired  but  temporarily  lost  adjustment  into  play. 

Image  functions  on  the  side  of  response,  on  the  side  of 
developing  new  habits,  new  forms  of  adjustment,  in  so  far  as 
the  conditions  of  action  which  it  represents,  or  projects,  are 
not  the  actual  conditions  of  action,  either  because  they  are 
so  inaccessible  as  to  demand  development  of  new  habits  for 
purposes  of  attaining  them,  or  else  because,  though  actually 
present,  they  stimulate  relatively  uncontrolled  aesthetic  or 
emotional  responses,  whose  very  expression,  however,  may 
be  translated  into  a  demand  for  more  adequate,  intelligent, 
controlled  habits  or  adjustments.  The  conscious  projection 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  197 

of  the  unattained,  even  of  the  unattainable,  not  only  marks 
a  certain  degree  of  attainment,  but  is  the  initiation  of  fur- 
ther development.  Here  we  see  again  that  a  stimulus  is  a 
condition  of  action  in  both  senses  of  the  ambiguity  of  the 
word  "condition."  It  is  both  a  state  or  condition  of  activity, 
and  an  initiation  or  condition  of  further  activity. 

As  an  indirect  stimulus  growing  out  of  a  problematic  sit- 
uation imagery  necessarily  brings  in  more  or  less  irrelevant 
material.  If  I  may  be  permitted  the  paradox,  imagery 
would  not  be  relevant  if  it  did  not  bring  in  the  irrelevant. 
The  novelty  of  the  situation  makes  it  impossible  to  say  in 
advance  what  will  be  relevant.  Hence  the  demand  for  range 
and  play  of  imagery.  It  is  only  the  successful  adjustment 
finally  hit  upon  and  worked  out  that  is  the  test  of  the  rele- 
vancy of  the  imagery  which  anticipated  it.  Even  this  test 
may  be  unfair,  since  it  is  likely  to  discount  the  value  of 
imagery  which  is  now  ruled  out,  but  which  may  have  been 
indispensable  in  turning  up  the  proper  cues  in  the  course  of 
the  process  of  reflection  and  experiment. 

To  restate  the  point  in  regard  to  the  psychological  func- 
tion of  imagery.  Imagery  functions  in  representing  control 
as  ideal,  not  as  fact.  It  represents  a  possible  process  of 
reconstructing  adjustments  and  habits;  it  is  not  an  actual 
and  complete  readjustment.  It  arises  normally  in  a  stress, 
in  the  presence  of  fresh  demands  and  new  problems.  It 
looks  forward  in  every  possible  direction,  because  it  is 
important  and  difficult  to  foresee  consequences.  But  sup- 
pose the  new  adjustment  to  be  made  with  reasonable  success — 
reasonable,  note.  Suppose  the  ideal  to  be  realized.  With 
practice  the  adjustment  becomes  less  problematic,  more 
under  control — that  is,  it  comes  to  require  less  conscious 
attention  to  bring  it  about.  The  image  loses  some  of  its 
sensuous  content.  It  becomes  worn  away,  more  remote, 
until  at  last  it  becomes  respectably  vague  and  abstract 


198  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

enough  to  be  classed  as  a  concept.  Imagery  is  the  stimulus 
of  the  reconstructive  process  between  habit  and  habit,  con- 
cept and  concept,  idea  and  idea. 

We  now  return  to  the  original  question  regarding  the 
logical  function  of  imagery.  There  is  only  one  condition,  I 
believe,  on  which  we  can  accept  the  assumption  of  both 
empiricist  and  conceptualist  that  imagery  is  on  the  same 
level  with  sense-perception,  and  that  is  the  assumption  that 
meaning,  logical  meaning,  is  on  the  same  level  with  habit, 
habit  naming  the  more  obvious,  overt  forms  of  response  to 
stimuli,  logical  meaning  naming  the  more  internal  forms  of 
response  or  reference.  Psychical  response  and  logical  ref- 
erence thus  become  equivalent  terms. 

We  have  seen  that  imagery  may  exercise  two  functions 
with  reference  to  habit,  as  direct  and  as  indirect  stimulus ;  so 
also  with  reference  to  logical  meaning,  imagery  may  be  the 
stimulus  to  a  direct  reference  of  the  idea  to  reality,  or  it  may 
present,  or  mirror,  conditions  with  regard  to  which  some 
new  meaning  is  to  be  worked  out.  The  quality,  the  sense- 
content,  of  imagery  may  per  se  suffice  directly  to  arouse  a 
habitual  attitude,  to  call  forth  an  immediate  reference  to 
reality.  It  may  cause  one  to  "tumble"  to  what  is  taking 
place,  to  *' catch  on,"  to  apprehend  (pardon  these  expressions 
for  the  sake  of  their  description  of  the  motor  aspect  of 
meaning),  as  when  we  say,  for  example:  "It  came  over  me 
like  a  flash  what  I  was  to  do,  and  I  did  it."  Our  more 
abstract  and  complicated  forms  of  judgment  and  reasoning, 
in  which  the  imagery  involved  is  reduced  to  the  minimum 
of  conscious,  qualitative  content,  are  of  the  same  order, 
though  at  the  other  extreme,  so  far  as  immediate  overt 
expression  is  concerned.  We  are  working  along  lines  of 
habitual  activity  so  familiar  that  we  can  work  almost  in  the 
dark.  We  need  no  elaborate  imagery.  Guided  only  by  the 
waving  of  a  signal  flag  or  by  the  shifting  gleam  of  a  sema- 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  199 

phore,  we  thread  our  way  swiftly  through  the  maze  of  tracks 
worn  smooth  by  use  and  habit.  But  suppose  a  new  line  of 
habit  is  to  be  constructed.  No  signal  flags  or  semaphores 
will  suffice.  A  detailed  survey  of  the  proposed  route  must 
be  had,  and  here  is  where  imagery  with  a  rich  and  varied 
yet  flexible  sensuous  content,  growing  out  of  previous  sur- 
veys, may  function  in  projecting  and  anticipating  the  new 
set  of  conditions,  and  thus  become  the  stimulus  of  a  new 
line  of  habit,  of  a  new  and  more  far-reaching  meaning.  As 
this  new  line  of  habit,  of  meaning,  gets  into  working  order 
with  the  rest  of  the  system,  imagery  tends  normally  to 
decline  again  to  the  r6le  of  signal  flags  and  semaphores. 

The  distinction  in  logical  theory  between  "image"  and 
"idea"  which  we  have  been  considering  is  only  a  half-truth 
from  the  point  of  view  of  psychology.  It  virtually  limits 
the  "idea"  to  a  fixed,  unalterable  reference  of  a  fragment 
of  a  desiccated  image  to  a  reality  beyond.  It  indifferently 
loses  the  play  and  richness  of  imagery  to  the  floating  rem- 
nants of  sense-content,  or  to  an  external  reality.  It  limits 
itself  to  an  examination  of  a  final  stage  in  thinking,  a  stage 
in  which  the  image  acts  as  a  direct  stimulus,  a  stage  in 
which  the  sense-content  of  the  image  has  little  or  no  func- 
tion per  se,  because  this  content  now  initiates  directly  a 
habitual  adjustment,  a  worked-out  and  established  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  end.  It  overlooks  the  process  of  conscious 
reflection  which  logically  precedes  every  such  adjustment 
not  purely  instinctive  or  accidental,  a  process  in  which 
imagery  as  representational  functions  indirectly  in  bringing 
the  resources  of  past  experience,  the  fund  of  acquired  habits, 
to  bear  upon  the  fragmentary  and  problematic  elements  of 
sense-experience  actually  present,  thus  maintaining  the  flow 
and  continuity  of  experience.  It  fails  to  recognize  that  in 
the  inseparable  association  of  meaning  with  quality,  of 
"idea"  with  "image,"  there  goes  the  possibility  of  working 


200  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

out  and  applying  new  meanings  from  old,  of  developing 
deeper  meanings,  of  testing  and  affirming  more  inclusive 
and  universal  meaning. 

We  are  confronted  with  this  alternative.  Either  the 
image  has  a  logical  function  in  virtue  of  its  sense-content,  or 
else  the  image  functions  logically  merely  as  a  symbol,  the 
sense-content  of  which  is  a  matter  of  complete  logical  indif- 
ference. According  to  the  empiricist,  the  former  is  the  case, 
according  to  the  conceptualist,  the  latter.  The  empiricist 
would  say  that  he  needs  the  image  to  piece  out  the  data  upon 
which  logical  processes  operate.  Having  met  this  need,  the 
image  is  retired  from  active  service.  For  the  empiricist  the 
processes  of  thought,  observing,  comparing,  generalizing, 
etc.,  are  as  independent  of  the  data  they  use  as,  for  the 
conceptualist,  logical  meaning,  reference,  and  "idea"  are 
independent  of  the  sense-content  of  the  "image."  In  reality 
he  agrees  with  the  conceptualist  in  excluding  the  sense- 
content  of  the  image  from  the  processes  of  thought,  and 
hence  from  the  domain  of  logic. 

From  the  standpoint  of  psychological  theory  the  concep- 
tualist is  an  improvement  over  the  empiricist.  He  has  gone 
a  step  farther  in  the  analysis  of  thought-processes  by  show- 
ing that  *they  are  bound  up  with  some  kind  of  imagery, 
however  irrelevant,  inconsequential,  and  worn  down  the 
sense-quality  of  that  imagery  may  be.  His  statement  of 
ideas  as  references  to  reality  lends  itself  readily,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  the  unitary  conception  in  psychology  of  ideo-motor, 
or  sensori-motor,  activity.  But  is  this  where  logical  theory 
is  to  stop,  while  psychology  as  a  study  of  "  states  of  con- 
sciousness" takes  up  the  unfinished  tale  and  carries  it  for- 
ward? It  seems  hardly  possible,  unless  logic  is  willing  to 
give  over  its  task  of  thinking  about  thinking. 

Reduce  the  image  to  a  mere  symbol.  Let  its  sense- 
quality  be  a  matter  of  complete  indifference.  What  have 


IMAGE  AND  IDEA  IN  LOGIC  201 

you,  then,  but  an  elementary  and  primitive  type  of  reflex 
action?  It  is  of  no  particular  consequence  even  from  what 
sense-organ  it  appears  to  proceed,  or  whether  it  appears  to 
be  peripherally  or  centrally  excited.  It  is  simply  a  case  of 
feel  and  act;  touch  and  go.  Is  this  thinking?  It  may  be 
regarded  as  either  the  germ  or  the  finality  of  thinking,  but 
what  most  of  us  are  inclined  to  believe  is  the  true  subject- 
matter  of  logic  is  not  to  be  limited  to  a  simple  reflex,  or 
even  to  a  chain  of  reflexes.  It  is  something  more  complex, 
even  if  nothing  more  than  an  intricate  tangle  of  chains  of 
reflexes. 

The  complexity  of  the  process  called  thinking  does  not 
reside  alone  in  the  instinctive  or  habitual  reflexes  involved. 
The  more  instinctive  and  habitual  any  adjustment  may  be, 
the  less  is  it  a  matter  of  thought,  as  everyone  knows,  although 
its  biological  complexity  is  none  the  less  patent  to  one  who 
looks  at  it  from  the  outside.  The  complexity  of  the  thinking 
process  resides  in  consciousness  also ;  it  resides  in  the  imagery, 
the  stimuli,  the  mere  symbols,  if  you  like,  that  have  "come" 
to  consciousness.  As  soon  as  the  complexity  begins  to  be 
felt,  as  soon  as  any  discrimination  whatsoever  begins  to  be 
introduced  or  appreciated,  at  that  instant  the  sense-content, 
the  quale,  of  imagery  begins  to  have  a  logical  function. 
Conscious  discrimination,  however  vague  and  evanescent, 
and  the  logical  function  of  the  quale  of  imagery  are  born 
together,  unless  one  chooses  to  regard  the  more  obvious  and 
deliberate  forms  of  conscious  discrimination  as  more  charac- 
teristic of  a  logical  process.  It  is  only  as  the  sense-contents 
of  various  images  are  discriminated  and  compared  that  any- 
thing like  thinking  can  be  conceived  to  go  on.  The  particular 
sense-content  of  an  image,  instead  of  being  a  matter  of  logical 
indifference,  is  the  condition,  the  possibility,  of  thinking. 

The  conceptualist  has  contributed  to  the  data  of  descriptive 
psychology  by  calling  attention,  by  implication  at  least,  to 


202  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

the  remote  and  reduced  character  of  the  imagery  which  may 
characterize  thinking.  But  it  by  no  means  follows  that  the 
more  remote  and  reduced  the  sense-content  of  an  image 
becomes,  the  less  important  is  that  sense-content  for  thinking, 
the  less  demand  for  discrimination.  On  the  contrary,  the 
sense-content  that  remains  may  be  of  supreme  logical  impor- 
tance. It  may  be  the  quintessence  of  meaning.  It  may  be 
the  conscious  factor  which,  when  discriminated  from  another 
almost  equally  sublimated  conscious  factor,  may  determine  a 
whole  course  of  action.  The  delicacy  and  rapidity  with 
which  these  reduced  forms  of  imagery  as  they  hover  about 
the  margin  of  consciousness  or  flit  across  its  focus  are  dis- 
criminated and  caught,  are  points  in  the  technique  of  that 
long  art  of  thinking,  begun  in  early  childhood.  The  fact 
that  questionnaire  investigations — like  that  of  Galton's,  for 
example — have  in  many  instances  failed  to  discover  in  the 
minds  of  scientists  and  advanced  thinkers  a  rich  and  varied 
furniture  of  imagery  does  not  argue  the  poverty  of  imagery 
in  such  minds;  it  argues,  rather,  a  highly  developed  tech- 
nique, a  species  of  virtuosity,  with  reference  to  the  sense- 
content  of  the  types  of  imagery  actually  in  use. 

To  push  a  step  farther  the  alternative  we  have  already 
stated  in  a  preliminary  way:  Either  the  "  idea,"  or  "logical 
meaning,"  lies  outside  of  the  process  of  thinking,  as  a  mere 
impulse  or  reflex;  or  else,  in  virtue  of  the  sense-content  of 
its  "image,"  it  enters  into  that  conscious  process  of  dis- 
crimination, comparison,  and  selection,  of  light  and  shade, 
of  doubt  and  inquiry,  which  constitutes  the  evolution  of  a 
judgment,  which  makes  the  life -history  of  a  movement  of 
thought 


IX 

THE  LOGIC  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY1 

IT  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  study  to  show  that  the  Pre- 
Socratics  possessed  a  system  of  logic  which  is  now  for  the 
first  time  brought  to  the  notice  of  the  modern  world.  Indeed, 
there  is  nothing  to  indicate  that  they  had  reflected  on  men- 
tal processes  in  such  a  way  as  to  call  for  an  organized  body 
of  canons  regulating  the  forms  of  concepts  and  conclusions. 
Aristotle  attributed  the  discovery  of  the  art  of  dialectic  to 
Zeno  the  Eleatic,  and  we  shall  see  in  the  sequel  that  there 
was  much  to  justify  the  opinion.  But  logic,  in  the  technical 
sense,  is  inconceivable  without  concepts,  and  from  the  days 
of  Aristotle  it  has  been  universally  believed  that  proper  defi- 
nitions owe  their  origin  to  Socrates.  A  few  crude  attempts 
at  definition,  if  such  they  may  be  rightly  called,  are  referred 
to  Empedocles  and  Democritus.  But  in  so  far  as  they  were 
conceived  in  the  spirit  of  science,  they  essayed  to  define 
things  materially  by  giving,  so  to  speak,  the  chemical  for- 
mula for  their  production.  Significant  as  this  very  fact  is, 
it  shows  that  even  the  rudiments  of  the  canons  of  thought 
were  not  the  subjects  of  reflection. 

In  his  Organon  Aristotle  makes  it  evident  that  the  demand 
for  a  regulative  art  of  scientific  discourse  was  created  by  the 
eristic  logic-chopping  of  those  who  were  most  deeply  influ- 
enced by  the  Eleatic  philosophy.  Indeed,  the  case  is  quite 
parallel  to  the  rise  of  the  art  of  rhetoric.  Aristotle  regarded 
Empedocles  as  the  originator  of  that  art,  as  he  referred  the 

iThis  study  may  be  regarded  as  in  some  sense  a  development  of  pp.  7-10  of 
The  Necessary  and  the  Contingent  in  the  Aristotelian  System,  published  in  1896 
by  The  University  of  Chicago  Press.  While  quite  independent  in  treatment,  the  two 
papers  supplement  each  other. 

203 


204  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

beginnings  of  dialectic  to  Zeno.  But  the  formulation  of  both 
arts  in  well-rounded  systems  came  much  later.  As  men 
conducted  lawsuits  before  the  days  of  Tisias  and  Corai,  so 
also  were  the  essential  principles  of  logic  operative  and 
effective  in  practice  before  Aristotle  gave  them  their  abstract 
formulation. 

While  it  is  true,  therefore,  that  the  Pre-Socratics  had  no 
formal  logic,  it  is  equally  true,  and  far  more  significant,  that 
they  either  received  from  their  predecessors  or  themselves 
developed  the  conceptions  and  the  presuppositions  on  which 
the  Aristotelian  logic  is  founded.  One  of  the  objects  of  this 
study  is  to  institute  a  search  for  some  of  these  basic  concep- 
tions of  Greek  thought,  almost  all  of  which  existed  before 
the  days  of  Socrates,  and  to  consider  their  origin  as  well  as 
their  logical  significance.  The  other  aim  here  kept  in  view 
is  to  trace  the  course  of  thought  in  which  the  logical  princi- 
ples, latent  in  all  attempts  to  construct  and  verify  theories, 
came  into  play. 

It  is  impossible,  no  doubt,  to  discover  a  body  of  thought 
which  does  not  ground  itself  upon  presuppositions.  They 
are  the  warp  into  which  the  woof  of  the  system,  itself  too 
often  consisting  of  frayed  ends  of  other  fabrics,  is  woven 
with  the  delight  of  a  supposed  creator.  Rarely  is  the  thinker 
so  conscious  of  his  own  mental  processes  that  he  is  aware  of 
what  he  takes  for  granted.  Ordinarily  this  retirement  to  an 
interior  line  takes  place  only  when  one  has  been  driven  back 
from  the  advanced  position  which  could  no  longer  be  main- 
tained. Emerson  has  somewhere  said :  "The  foregoing  gen- 
erations beheld  God  and  Nature  face  to  face;  we  through 
their  eyes.  Why  should  not  we  also  enjoy  an  original  relation 
to  the  universe  ?  Why  should  not  we  have  a  poetry  and  philoso- 
phy of  insight  and  not  of  tradition,  and  a  religion  by  revela- 
tion to  us  and  not  the  history  of  theirs?"  The  difficulty  lies 
precisely  in  our  faith  in  immediate  insight  and  revelation, 


LOGIC  OP  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY    205 

which  are  themselves  only  short-cuts  of  induction,  psycho- 
logical short  circuits,  conducted  by  media  we  have  disre- 
garded. Only  a  fundamentally  critical  philosophy  pushes 
its  doubt  to  the  limit  of  demanding  the  credentials  of  those 
conceptions  which  have  come  to  be  regarded  as  axiomatic. 

The  need  of  going  back  of  Aristotle  in  our  quest  for  the 
truth  is  well  shown  by  his  attitude  toward  the  first  principles 
of  the  several  sciences.  To  him  they  are  immediately  given 
— apecroi,  TrpoTacreis — and  hence  are  ultimate  a  priori.  The 
historical  significance  of  this  fact  is  already  apparent.  It 
means  that  in  his  day  these  first  principles,  which  sum  up 
the  outcome  of  previous  inductive  movements  of  thought, 
were  regarded  as  so  conclusively  established  that  the  steps 
by  which  they  had  been  inferred  were  allowed  to  lapse  from 
memory. 

No  account  of  the  history  of  thought  can  hope  to  satisfy 
the  demands  of  reason  that  does  not  explain  the  origin  of  the 
convictions  thus  embodied  in  principles.  The  only  accept- 
able explanation  would  be  in  terms  of  will  and  interest.  To 
give  such  an  account  would,  however,  require  the  knowledge 
of  secular  pursuits  and  ambitions  no  longer  obtainable.  It 
might  be  fruitful  of  results  if  we  could  discover  even  the 
theoretical  interests  of  the  age  before  Thales;  but  we  know 
that  in  modern  times  the  direction  of  interest  characteristic 
of  the  purely  practical  pursuits  manifests  its  reformative 
influences  in  speculation  a  century  or  more  after  it  has  begun 
to  shape  the  course  of  common  life.  Hence  we  might  mis- 
interpret the  historical  data  if  they  were  obtainable.  But 
general  considerations,  which  we  need  not  now  rehearse,  as 
well  as  indications  contained  in  the  later  history  of  thought, 
hereinafter  sketched,  point  to  the  primacy  of  the  practical  as 
yielding  the  direction  of  interest  that  determines  the  course 
it  shall  take. 

It  was  said  above  that  the  principles  of  science  are  the 


206  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

result  of  an  inductive  movement,  and  that  the  inductive 
movement  is  directed  by  an  interest.  Hence  the  principles 
are  contained  in,  or  rather  are  the  express  definition  of,  the 
interest  that  gave  them  birth.  In  other  words,  there  is 
implied  in  all  induction  a  process  of  deduction.  Every 
stream  of  thought  embraces  not  only  the  main  current,  but 
also  an  eddy,  which  here  and  there  re-enters  it.  And  this  is 
one  way  of  explaining  the  phenomenon  which  has  long 
engaged  the  thought  of  philosophers,  namely,  the  fact  of 
successful  anticipations  of  the  discoveries  of  science  or,  more 
generally  still,  the  possibility  of  synthetic  judgments  a  priori. 
The  solution  of  the  problem  is  ultimately  contained  in  its 
statement.1 

To  arrive  at  a  stage  of  mentality  not  based  on  assumptions 
one  would  have,  no  doubt,  to  go  back  to  its  beginnings. 
Greek  thought,  even  in  the  time  of  Thales,  was  well  furnished 
with  them.  We  cannot  pause  to  catalogue  them,  but  it  may 
further  our  project  if  we  consider  a  few  of  the  more  impor- 
tant. The  precondition  of  thought  as  of  life  is  that  nature 
be  uniform,  or  ultimately  that  the  world  be  rational.  This 
is  not  even,  as  it  becomes  later,  a  conscious  demand ;  it  is  the 
primary  ethical  postulate  which  expresses  itself  in  the  con- 
fidence that  it  is  so.  Viewed  from  a  certain  angle  it 
may  be  called  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason.  Closely 
associated  with  it  is  the  universal  belief  of  the  early  philoso- 
phers of  Greece  that  everything  that  comes  into  being  is 
bound  up  inseparably  with  that  which  has  been  before;  more 
precisely,  that  there  is  no  absolute,  but  only  relative,  Becom- 
ing. Corollaries  of  this  axiom  soon  appeared  in  the  postu- 
lates of  the  conservation  of  matter  or  mass,  and  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy,  or  more  properly  for  the  ancients,  of  motion. 

i  The  best  special  illustration  of  this  truth  with  which  I  am  acquainted  is  pre- 
sented for  the  science  of  chemistry  in  an  article  by  F.  WALD,  "  Die  Genesis  der 
stochiometrischen  Grundgesetze,"  in  Zeitschrift  fur  physikalische  Chemie,  Vol. 
XVIII  (1895),  pp.  337  ff. 


LOGIC  OF  THE  PKE-SOCEATIC  PHILOSOPHY    207 

Logically  these  principles  appear  to  signify  that  the  subject, 
while  under  definition,  shall  remain  just  what  it  is  ;  and  that, 
in  the  system  constituted  of  subject,  predicate,  and  copula, 
the  terms  shall  "stay  put"  while  the  adjustment  of  verifica- 
tion is  in  progress.  It  is  a  matter  of  course  that  the  constants 
in  the  great  problem  should  become  permanent  landmarks. 

Other  corollaries  derive  from  this  same  principle  of 
uniformity.  Seeing  that  all  that  comes  to  be  in  some  sense 
already  is,  there  appears  the  postulate  of  the  unity  of  the 
world  ;  and  this  unity  manifests  itself  not  only  in  the  integrity 
and  homogeneity  of  the  world-ground,  but  also  in  the  more 
ideal  conception  of  a  universal  law  to  which  all  special 
modes  of  procedure  in  nature  are  ancillary.  In  these  we 
recognize  the  insistent  demand  for  the  organization  of  predi- 
cate and  copula.  Side  by  side  with  these  formulae  stands 
the  other,  which  requires  an  ordered  process  of  becoming 
and  a  graduated  scale  of  existences,  such  as  can  mediate 
between  the  extremes  of  polarity.  Such  series  meet  us  on 
every  hand  in  early  Greek  thought.  The  process  of  rare- 
faction and  condensation  in  Anaximenes,  the  6809  avco  Kara) 
of  Heraclitus,  the  regular  succession  of  the  four  Empedoclean 
elements  in  almost  all  later  systems  —  these  and  other  exam- 
ples spontaneously  occur  to  the  mind.  The  significance  of 
this  conception,  as  the  representative  of  an  effective  copula, 
will  presently  be  seen.  More  subtle,  perhaps,  than  any  of 
these  principles,  though  not  allowed  to  go  so  long  unchal- 
lenged, is  the  assumption  of  a  </>ucri9,  that  is,  the  assumption 
that  all  nature  is  instinct  with  life.  The  logical  interpreta- 
tion of  this  postulate  would  seem  to  be  that  the  concrete 
system  of  things — subject,  predicate,  copula — constitutes  a 
totality  complete  in  itself  and  needing  no  jog  from  without. 

In  this  survey  of  the  preconceptions  of  the  early  Greek 
philosophers  I  have  employed  the  terms  of  the  judgment  with- 
out apology.  The  justification  for  this  course  must  come 


208  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

ultimately,  as  for  any  assumption,  from  the  success  of  its 
application  to  the  facts.  But  if  "logic"  merely  formulates 
in  a  schematic  way  that  which  in  life  is  the  manipulation  of 
concrete  experience,  with  a  view  to  attaining  practical  ends, 
then  its  forms  must  apply  here  as  well  as  anywhere.  Logical 
terminology  may  therefore  be  assumed  to  be  welcome  to  this 
field  where  judgments  are  formed,  induction  is  made  from 
certain  facts  to  defined  conceptions,  and  deductions  are 
derived  from  principles  or  premises  assumed.  Speaking  then 
in  these  terms  we  may  say  that  the  Pre-Socratics  had  three 
logical  problems  set  for  them:  First,  there  was  a  demand 
for  a  predicate,  or,  in  other  words,  for  a  theory  of  the  world. 
Secondly,  there  was  the  need  of  ascertaining  just  what  should 
be  regarded  as  the  subject,  or,  otherwise  stated,  just  what 
it  was  that  required  explanation.  Thirdly,  there  arose  the 
necessity  of  discovering  ways  and  means  by  which  the  theory 
could  be  predicated  of  the  world  and  by  which,  in  turn,  the 
hypothesis  erected  could  be  made  to  account  for  the  concrete 
experience  of  life:  in  terms  of  logic  this  problem  is  that  of 
maintaining  an  efficient  copula.  It  is  not  assumed  that  the 
sequence  thus  stated  was  historically  observed  without  cross- 
ing and  overlapping  ;  but  a  survey  of  the  history  of  the  period 
will  show  that,  in  a  general  way,  the  logical  requirements 
asserted  themselves  in  this  order. 

1.  Greek  philosophy  began  its  career  with  induction. 
We  have  already  stated  that  the  preconceptions  with  which 
it  approached  its  task  were  the  result  of  previous  inductions, 
and  indeed  the  epic  and  theogonic  poetry  of  the  Greeks 
abounds  in  thoughts  indicative  of  the  consciousness  of  all  of 
these  problems.  Thus  Homer  is  familiar  with  the  notion 
that  all  things  proceed  from  water,1  and  that,  when  the 
human  body  decays,  it  resolves  itself  into  earth  and  water.2 
Other  opinions  might  be  enumerated,  but  they  would  add 

IS    201,246.  2H    99. 


LOGIC    OF    THE    PBE-SOCBATIO    PHILOSOPHY      209 

nothing  to  the  purpose.  When  men  began,  in  the  spirit  of 
philosophy,  to  theorize  about  the  world,  they  assumed  that 
it — the  subject — was  sufficiently  known.  Its  existence  was 
taken  for  granted,  and  that  which  engaged  their  attention 
was  the  problem  of  its  meaning.  What  predicate — so  we 
may  formulate  their  question — should  be  given  to  the  sub- 
ject? It  is  noticeable  that  their  induction  was  quite  per- 
functory. But  such  is  always  the  case  until  there  are  rival 
theories  competing  for  acceptance,  and  even  then  the  impulse 
to  gather  up  evidence  derived  from  a  wide  field  and  assured 
by  resort  to  experiment  comes  rather  with  the  desire  to  test 
a  hypothesis  than  to  form  it.  It  is  the  effort  to  verify  that 
brings  out  details  and  also  the  negative  instances.  Hence 
we  are  not  to  blame  Thales  for  rashness  in  making  his 
generalization  that  all  is  Water.  We  do  not  know  what  indi- 
cations led  to  this  conclusion.  Aristotle  ventured  a  guess, 
but  the  motives  assumed  for  Thales  agree  too  well  with  those 
which  weighed  with  Hippo  to  admit  of  ready  acceptance. 

Anaximander,  feeling  the  need  of  deduction  as  a  sequel 
to  induction,  found  his  predicate  in  the  Infinite.  We  can- 
not now  delay  to  inquire  just  what  he  meant  by  the 
term;  but  it  is  not  unlikely  that  its  very  vagueness  recom- 
mended it  to  a  man  of  genius  who  caught  enthusiastically 
at  the  skirts  of  knowledge.  Anaximenes,  having  pushed 
verification  somewhat  farther  and  eliciting  some  negative 
instances,  rejected  water  and  the  Infinite  and  inferred 
that  all  was  air.  His  apx^  must  have  the  quality  of  infinity, 
but,  a  copula  having  been  found  in  the  process  of  rarefaction 
and  condensation,  it  must  occupy  a  determinate  place  in  the 
series  of  typical  forms  of  existence.  The  logical  signifi- 
cance of  this  thought  will  engage  our  attention  later. 

Meanwhile  it  may  be  well  to  note  that  thus  far  only  one 
predicate  has  been  offered  by  each  philosopher.  This  is 
doubtless  due  to  the  preconception  of  the  unity  and  homo- 


210  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

geneity  of  the  world,  of  which  we  have  already  made  mention. 
Although  at  the  beginning  its  significance  was  little  realized, 
the  conception  was  destined  to  play  a  prominent  part  in 
Greek  thought.  It  may  be  regarded  from  different  points 
of  view  not  necessarily  antagonistic.  One  may  say,  as 
indeed  has  oftentimes  been  said,  that  it  was  due  to  ignorance. 
Men  did  not  know  the  complexity  of  the  world,  and  hence 
declared  its  substance  to  be  simple.  Again,  it  may  be 
affirmed  that  the  assumption  was  merely  the  naive  reflex  of 
the  ethical  postulate  that  we  shall  unify  our  experience  and 
organize  it  for  the  realization  of  our  ideals.  While  increased 
knowledge  has  multiplied  the  so-called  chemical  elements, 
physics  knows  nothing  of  their  differences,  and  chemistry 
itself  demands  their  reduction. 

The  extension  and  enlarged  scope  of  homogeneity  came 
in  two  ways:  First,  it  presented  itself  by  way  of  abstraction 
from  the  particular  predicates  that  may  be  given  to  things. 
This  was  due  to  the  operation  of  the  fundamental  assump- 
tion that  the  world  must  be  intelligible.  Thus,  even  in 
Anaximander,  the  world-ground  takes  no  account  of  the 
diversity  of  things  except  in  the  negative  way  of  providing 
that  the  contrariety  of  experience  shall  arise  from  it.  We 
are  therefore  referred  for  our  predicate  to  a  somewhat 
behind  concrete  experience.  The  Pythagoreans  fix  upon  a 
single  aspect  of  things  as  the  essential,  and  find  the  mean- 
ing of  the  world  in  mathematical  relations.  The  Eleatics 
press  the  conception  of  homogeneity  until  it  is  reduced  to 
identity.  Identity  means  the  absence  of  difference  ;  hence, 
spatially  considered,  it  requires  the  negation  of  a  void  and 
the  indivisibility  of  the  world ;  viewed  temporally,  it  pre- 
cludes the  succession  of  different  states  and  hence  the 
possibility  of  change. 

We  thus  reach  the  acute  stage  of  the  problem  of  the  One 
and  the  Many.  The  One  is  here  the  predicate,  the  subject 


LOGIC   OF    THE    PRE-SOCKATIO    PHILOSOPHY      211 

is  the  Many.  The  solution  of  the  difficulty  is  the  task  of 
the  copula,  and  we  shall  recur  to  the  theme  in  due  time. 
It  may  be  well,  however,  at  this  point  to  draw  attention  to 
the  fact  that  the  One  is  not  always  identical  with  the  predi- 
cate, nor  the  Many  with  the  subject.  In  the  rhythmic 
movement  of  erecting  and  verifying  hypotheses  the  interest 
shifts  and  what  was  but  now  the  predicate,  by  taking  the 
place  of  the  premises,  comes  to  be  regarded  as  the  given 
from  which  the  particular  is  to  be  derived  or  deduced. 
There  is  thus  likewise  a  shift  in  the  positions  of  existence 
and  meaning.  The  subject,  or  the  world,  was  first  assumed 
as  the  given  means  with  which  to  construct  the  predicate, 
its  meaning ;  once  the  hypothesis  has  been  erected,  the 
direction  of  interest  shifts  back  to  the  beginning,  and  in 
the  process  of  verification  or  deduction  the  quondam  predi- 
cate, now  the  premises,  becomes  the  given,  and  the  task  set 
for  thought  is  the  derivation  of  fact.  For  the  moment,  or 
until  the  return  to  the  world  is  accomplished,  the  One  is  the 
only  real,  the  Manifold  remains  mere  appearance. 

The  second  form  in  which  the  sense  of  the  homogeneity 
of  the  world  embodies  itself  is  not,  like  the  first,  static,  but 
is  altogether  dynamic.  That  which  makes  the  whole  world 
kin  is  neither  the  presence  nor  the  absence  of  a  quality,  but  a 
principle.  The  law  thus  revealed  is,  therefore,  not  a  matter 
of  the  predicate,  but  is  the  copula  itself.  Hence  we  must 
defer  a  fuller  consideration  of  it  for  the  present. 

2.  As  has  already  been  said,  the  inductive  movement 
implies  the  deductive,  and  not  only  as  something  preceding 
or  accompanying  it,  but  as  its  inner  meaning  and  ultimate 
purpose.  So  too  it  was  with  the  earliest  Greek  thinkers. 
Their  object  in  setting  up  a  predicate  was  the  derivation  of 
the  subject  from  it.  In  other  words  their  ambition  was  to 
discover  the  apxtf  from  which  the  genesis  of  the  world  pro- 
ceeds. But  deduction  is  really  a  much  more  serious  task 


212  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

than  would  at  first  appear  to  one  who  is  familiar  with  the 
Aristotelian  machinery  of  premises  and  middle  terms.  The 
business  of  deduction  is  to  reveal  the  subject,  and  ordi- 
narily the  subject  quite  vanishes  from  view.  Induction  is 
rapid,  but  deduction  lags  far  behind.  It  may  require  but  a 
momentary  flash  of  "insight"  on  the  part  of  the  physical  phi- 
losopher to  discover  a  principle ;  if  it  is  really  significant, 
inventors  will  be  engaged  for  centuries  in  deducing  from  it 
applications  to  the  needs  of  life  by  means  of  contrivances. 
Thus  after  ages  we  come  to  know  more  of  the  subject,  which 
is  thereby  enriched.  The  contrivances  are  the  representa- 
tives of  the  copula  in  practical  affairs ;  in  quasi-theoretical 
spheres  they  are  the  apparatus  for  experimentation.  It  has 
just  been  remarked  that  by  the  application  of  the  principles 
to  life  it  is  enriched  ;  in  other  words,  it  receives  new  mean- 
ing, and  new  meaning  signifies  a  new  predicate.  Theory 
is  at  times  painfully  aware  of  the  multitude  of  new  predicates 
proposed ;  rarely  does  it  realize  that  there  has  been  created 
a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.  Without  the  latter,  the  for- 
mer would  be  absurd. 

Men  take  very  much  for  granted  and  regard  almost  every 
achievement  as  a  matter  of  course.  Hence  they  do  not  become 
aware  of  {heir  changed  position  except  as  it  reflects  itself  in 
new  schemes  and  in  a  larger  outlook.  The  subject  receives 
only  a  summary  glance  to  discover  what  new  predicate  shall 
be  evolved.  Hence,  while  there  is  in  Greek  philosophy  a 
strongly  marked  deductive  movement,  the  theoretical  results 
to  the  subject  are  insignificant.  Thales  seems,  indeed,  to 
have  had  no  means  to  offer  for  the  derivation  of  the  world, 
but  he  evidently  had  no  doubt  that  it  was  possible.  With  him 
and  with  others  the  assumption,  however  vaguely  understood, 
seems  to  have  been  that  the  subject,  like  the  predicate,  was  sim- 
ple. Thus  the  essential  unity  of  the  world,  considered  as  exist- 
ence no  less  than  as  meaning,  is  a  foregone  conclusion.  The 


LOGIC    OP    THE    PBE-SOCEATIO    PHILOSOPHY      213 

sense  of  a  division  in  the  subject  seems  to  arise  with  Empe- 
docles  when,  reaping  the  harvest  of  the  Eleatic  definition  of 
substance,  he  parted  the  world,  as  subject  and  as  predicate, 
into  four  elements. 

We  may,  perhaps,  pause  a  moment  to  consider  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  assumption  of  four  elements  which  plays  so 
large  a  part  in  subsequent  philosophies.  There  is  no  need 
of  enlarging  on  the  importance  of  the  association  of  multiple 
elements  with  the  postulate  that  nothing  is  absolutely  created 
and  nothing  absolutely  passes  away.  These  are  indeed  the 
pillars  that  support  chemical  science,  and  they  further  imply 
the  existence  of  qualities  of  different  rank;  but  that  implica- 
tion, as  we  shall  see,  lay  even  in  the  process  of  rarefaction 
and  condensation  introduced  by  Anaximenes.  The  four 
elements  concern  us  here  chiefly  as  testifying  to  the  fact  that 
certain  practical  interests  had  summed  up  the  essential 
characteristics  of  nature  in  forms  sufficiently  significant  to 
have  maintained  themselves  even  to  our  day.  In  regard  to 
fire,  air,  and  water  this  is  not  greatly  to  be  wondered  at ;  it 
is  a  somewhat  different  case  with  earth.  If  metallurgy  and 
other  pursuits  which  deal  with  that  which  is  roughly  classed 
as  earth  had  been  highly  enough  developed  to  have  reacted 
upon  the  popular  mind,  this  element  could  not  possibly  have 
been  assumed  to  be  so  homogeneous.  The  conception 
clearly  reflects  the  predominantly  agricultural  interest  of 
the  Greeks  in  their  relation  to  the  earth.  This  further 
illustrates  the  slow  progress  which  deduction  makes  in  the 
reconstitution  of  the  subject. 

It  is  different,  however,  with  Anaxagoras  and  the  Ato- 
mists.  Apparently  the  movement  begun  by  Empedocles 
soon  ran  its  extreme  course.  Instead  of  four  elements  there 
is  now  an  infinite  number  of  substances,  each  differentiated 
from  the  other.  The  meaning  of  this  wide  swing  of  the 
pendulum  is  not  altogether  clear;  but  it  is  evident  from  the 


214  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

system  of  Anaxagoras  that  the  metals,  for  example,  possessed 
a  significance  which  they  can  not  have  had  for  Empedocles. 

The  opposite  swing  of  the  pendulum  is  seen  in  the  later 
course  of  the  Eleatics.  Given  a  predicate  as  fixed  and 
unified  as  they  assumed,  the  subject  cannot  possibly  be  con- 
ceived in  terms  of  it  and  hence  it  is  denied  outright.  In  the 
dialectic  of  Zeno  and  Melissus,  dealing  with  the  problems 
of  the  One  and  the  Many,  there  is  much  that  suggests  the 
solution  offered  by  the  Atomists ;  but  it  is  probably  impossible 
now  to  ascertain  whether  these  passages  criticise  a  doctrine 
already  propounded  or  pointed  the  way  for  successors. 
While  the  Eleatics  asserted  the  sole  reality  of  the  One, 
Anaxagoras  and  the  Atomists  postulated  a  multiplicity  without 
essential  unity.  But  the  human  mind  seems  to  be  incapable 
of  resting  in  that  decision ;  it  demands  that  the  world  shall 
have  not  meanings,  but  a  meaning.  This  demand  calls  not 
only  for  a  unified  predicate,  but  also  for  an  effective  copula. 

3.  We  have  already  remarked  that  the  steps  by  which 
the  predicate  was  inferred  are  for  the  most  part  unknown. 
Certain  suggestions  are  contained  in  the  reports  of  Aristotle, 
but  it  is  safe  to  say  that  they  are  generally  guesses  well  or 
ill  founded.  The  summary  inductive  mediation  has  left  few 
traces ;  and  the  process  of  verification,  in  the  course  of  which 
hypotheses  were  rejected  and  modified,  can  be  followed  only 
here  and  there  in  the  records.  Almost  our  only  source  of 
information  is  the  dialectic  of  systems.  Fortunately  for  our 
present  purpose  we  do  not  need  to  know  the  precise  form 
which  a  question  assumed  to  the  minds  of  the  several  phi- 
losophers ;  the  efforts  which  they  made  to  meet  the  imperious 
demands  of  logic  here  speak  for  themselves. 

At  first  there  was  no  scheme  for  the  mediation  of  the 
predicate  back  to  the  subject.  Indeed  there  seems  not  to 
have  existed  in  the  mind  of  Thales  a  sense  of  its  need. 
Anaximander  raised  the  question,  but  the  process  of  segrega- 


LOGIC  OF  THE  PBE-SOCBATIC  PHILOSOPHY    215 

tion  or  separation  (eK/cpivecrOai)  which  he  propounded  was  so 
vaguely  conceived  that  it  has  created  more  problems  than  it 
solved.  Anaximenes  first  proposed  a  scheme  that  has  borne 
fruits.  He  said  that  things  are  produced  from  air  by  rare- 
faction and  condensation.  This  process  offers  not  only  a 
principle  of  difference,  but  also  a  regulative  conception,  the 
evaluation  of  which  engaged  the  thought  of  almost  all  the 
later  Pre-Socratics.  It  implies  that  extension  and  mass  con- 
stitute the  essential  characters  of  substance,  and,  fully  appre- 
hended, contains  in  germ  the  whole  materialistic  philosophy 
from  Parmenides  at  one  extreme  to  Democritus  and  Anax- 
agoras  at  the  other.  The  difficulties  inherent  in  the  view 
were  unknown  to  Anaximenes ;  for,  having  a  unitary  predi- 
cate, he  assumed  also  a  homogeneous  subject. 

The  logical  position  of  Heraclitus  is  similar  to  that  of 
Anaximenes.  He  likewise  posits  a  simple  predicate  and 
further  signalizes  its  functional  character  by  naming  it  Fire. 
Without  venturing  upon  debatable  ground  we  may  say  that 
it  was  the  restless  activity  of  the  element  that  caused  him  to 
single  it  out  as  best  expressing  the  meaning  of  things.  Its 
rhythmic  libration  typified  to  him  the  principle  of  change  in 
existence  and  of  existence  in  change.  It  is  the  "ever-living" 
copula,  devouring  subject  and  predicate  alike  and  re-creating 
them  functionally  as  co-ordinate  expressions  of  itself.  That 
which  alone  zs,  the  abiding,  is  not  the  physical  composition 
of  a  thing,  but  the  law  of  reciprocity  by  which  it  maintains 
a  balance.  This  he  calls  variously  by  the  names  of  Harmony, 
Logos,  Necessity,  Justice.  In  this  system  of  functional 
co-ordinates  nothing  escapes  the  accounting  on  'Change;1 

iln  allusion  to  fr.  90  (DiELs).  DIELS  finds  in  fr.  108  (fr.  18,  BYWATEE),  on 
<ro<f>6v  eo-Ti  ndvTwv  KexwpioTxecoi/  the  thought  that  God  is  the  Absolute,  comparing  the 
Nous  of  Anaxagoras  and  the  x^""-^  i°"«a  of  Plato  and  the  ouo-ta  xwpio-n;  of  Aristotle. 
He  assumes  that  <ro<f>6v  =  Ao-yos  and  concedes  great  significance  to  the  fragment. 
But  this  interpretation  is  utterly  incompatible  with  everything  else  that  we  know 
of  Heraclitus,  and  should  be  admitted  only  if  it  were  the  only  one  admissible. 
ZELLEE  discusses  the  fragment  at  length,  Vol.  I,  p.  629, 1.  If  Diels's  interpretation 
be  accepted,  the  exposition  above  given  of  Heraclitus's  logical  position  must  be 
abandoned. 


216  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

all  things  are  in  continuous  flux,  only  the  nodes  of  the  rhythm 
remaining  constant.  It  is  not  surprising  therefore  that 
Heraclitus  has  been  the  subject  of  so  much  speculation  and 
comment  in  modern  times ;  for  the  functional  character  of  all 
distinctions  in  his  system  marks  the  affinity  of  his  doctrines 
for  those  of  modern  psychology  and  logic.1 

The  Pythagoreans,  having  by  abstraction  obtained  a 
predicate,  acknowledged  the  existence  of  the  subject,  but  did 
not  feel  the  need  of  a  copula  in  the  theoretical  sphere,  except 
as  it  concerned  the  inner  relation  of  the  predicate.  To  them 
the  world  was  number,  but  number  itself  was  pluralistic,  or 
let  us  rather  say  dualistic.  The  odd  and  the  even,  the  generic 
constituents  of  number,  liad  somehow  to  be  brought  together. 
The  bond  was  found  in  Unity,  or,  again,  in  Harmony.  When 
they  inquired  how  numbers  constituted  the  world,  their 
answer  was  in  general  only  a  nugatory  exercise  of  an  un- 
bridled fancy.2  Such  and  such  a  number  was  Justice,  such 
another,  Man.  It  was  only  in  the  wholly  practical  sphere  of 
experiment  that  they  reached  a  conclusion  worth  recording. 
Its  significance  they  themselves  did  not  perceive.  Here,  by 
the  application  of  mathematical  measurements  to  sounds, 
they  discovered  how  to  produce  tones  of  a  given  pitch,  and 
thus  successfully  demonstrated  the  efficiency  of  their  copula. 

The  Eleatics  followed  the  same  general  course  of  abstrac- 
tion; but  with  them  the  sense  of  the  unity  of  the  world 
effaced  its  rich  diversity.  Xenophanes  does  not  appear  to 
have  pressed  the  conception  so  far  as  to  deny  all  change 
within  the  world.  Parmenides,  however,  bated  no  jot  of  the 
legitimate  consequences  of  his  logical  position,  interpreting, 
as  he  did,  the  predicate,  originally  conceived  as  meaning,  in 

i  It  has  been,  and  in  some  quarters  is  still,  the  fashion  to  say  that  Heraclitus  is 
the  originator  of  the  doctrine  of  relativity ;  but  Zeller  is  quite  right  in  denying  the 
charge.  No  doubt  his  teachings  lent  themselves  readily  to  such  a  development,  but 
he  did  not  so  express  himself.  According  to  him  the  contrarieties  coexist  in  the  process. 

a  Cf.  EITTEB-PEELLBK,  §65c. 


LOGIC   OF   THE   PBE-SOCRATIC   PHILOSOPHY     217 

terms  of  existence.  That  which  is  simply  is.  Thus  there 
is  left  only  a  one-time  predicate,  now  converted  into  a  sub- 
ject of  which  only  itself,  as  a  brute  fact,  can  be  predicated. 
Stated  logically,  Parmenides  is  capable  only  of  uttering 
identical  propositions:  A=A.  The  fallacious  character  of 
the  report  of  the  senses  and  the  impossibility  of  Becoming 
followed  as  a  matter  of  course.  Where  the  logical  copula  is 
a  mere  sign  of  equation  there  can  be  neither  induction  nor 
deduction.  We  are  caught  in  a  theoretical  cul-de-sac. 

We  are  not  now  concerned  to  know  in  what  light  the 
demand  "for  a  treatise  on  the  world  of  Opinion  may  have 
appeared  to  Parmenides  himself.  The  avenues  by  which 
men  reach  conclusions  which  are  capable  of  simplification 
and  syllogistic  statement  are  too  various  to  admit  of  plaus- 
ible conjecture  in  the  absence  of  specific  evidence.  But  it  is 
clear  that  his  resort  to  the  expedient  reflected  a  conscious- 
ness of  the  state  of  deadlock.  In  that  part  of  his  philosophi- 
cal poem  he  dealt  with  many  questions  of  detail  in  a  rather 
more  practical  spirit.  Following  the  lead  of  Heraclitus  and 
the  Pythagoreans  he  was  more  successful  here  than  in  the 
field  of  metaphysics.  Thus  we  see  once  more  that  the  wound& 
of  theory  are  healed  by  practice.  But,  as  usual,  even  though 
the  metaphysician  does  receive  the  answer  to  his  doubts  by 
falling  into  a  severely  practical  pit  and  extricating  himself 
by  steps  which  he  fashions  with  his  hands,  his  mental  habit 
is  not  thereby  reconstructed.  The  fixed  predicate  of  the 
Eleatics  was  bequeathed  to  the  Platonic- Aristotelian  formal 
logic,  and  induction  and  deduction  remained  for  centuries  in 
theory  a  race  between  the  hedgehog  and  the  hare.1  The 
true  significance  of  the  destructive  criticism  brought  to  bear 
by  Zeno  and  Melissus  on  the  concepts  of  unity,  plurality, 
continuity,  extension,  time,  and  motion  is  simply  this:  that 

i  This,  in  a  word,  is  the  burden  of  my  study  of  The  Necessary  and  the  Contingent 
in  the  Aristotelian  System. 


218  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

when  by  a  shift  of  the  attention  a  predicate  becomes  subject 
or  meaning  fossilizes  as  existence,  the  terms  of  the  logical 
process  lose  their  functional  reference  and  grow  to  be 
unmeaning  and  self-contradictory. 

We  have  already  remarked  that  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras, 
and  the  Atomists  sought  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  One  and 
the  Many,  of  the  subject  and  the  predicate,  by  shattering 
the  unitary  predicate  and  thus  leaving  the  field  to  plurality 
in  both  spheres.  But  obviously  they  were  merely  postpon- 
ing the  real  question.  Thought,  as  well  as  action,  demands 
a  unity  somewhere.  Hence  the  absorbing  task  of  these  phi- 
losophers is  to  disclose  or  contrive  such  a  bond  of  unity. 
The  form  which  their  quest  assumed  was  the  search  for  a 
basis  for  physical  interaction.1 

Empedocles  clearly  believed  that  he  was  solving  the  diffi- 
culty in  one  form  when  he  instituted  the  rhythmic  libration 
between  unity  under  the  sway  of  Love  and  multiplicity 
under  the  domination  of  Hate.  But  even  he  was  not  satisfied 
with  that.  While  Love  brought  all  the  elements  together 
into  a  sphere  and  thus  produced  a  unity,  it  was  a  unity  con- 
stituted of  a  mixture  of  elements  possessing  inalienable  char- 
acters not  only  different  but  actually  antagonistic.  On  the 
other  hand,  Hate  did  indeed  separate  the  confused  particles, 
but  it  effected  a  sort  of  unity  in  that,  by  segregating  the 
particles  of  the  several  elements  from  the  others,  it  brought 
like  and  like  together.  In  so  far  Aristotle  was  clearly  right  in 
attributing  to  Love  the  power  to  separate  as  well  as  to  unite. 
Moreover,  it  would  seem  that  there  never  was  a  moment  in 
which  both  agencies  were  not  conceived  to  be  operative,  to 
however  small  an  extent. 

Empedocles  asserted,  however,  that  a  world  could  arise 
only  in  the  intervals  between  the  extremes  of  victory  in  the 

1 1  have  in  preparation  a  study  of  the  problem  of  physical  interaction  in  Pre- 
Socratic  philosophy  which  deals  with  this  question  in  all  its  phases. 


LOGIC  or  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY    219 

contest  between  Love  and  Hate,  when,  so  to  speak,  the  battle 
was  drawn  and  there  was  a  general  mette  of  the  combatants. 
It  may  be  questioned,  perhaps,  whether  he  distinctly  stated 
that  in  our  world  everything  possessed  its  portion  of  each  of 
the  elements ;  but  so  indispensable  did  he  consider  this  mix- 
ture that  its  function  of  providing  a  physical  unity  is  unmis- 
takable. A  further  evidence  of  his  insistent  demand  for 
unity — the  copula — is  found  in  his  doctrine  that  only  like 
can  act  on  like;  and  the  scheme  of  pores  and  effluvia  which 
he  contrived  bears  eloquent  testimony  to  the  earnest  consid- 
eration he  gave  to  this  matter.  For  he  conceived  that  all 
interaction  took  place  by  means  of  them. 

Empedocles,  then,  may  be  said  to  have  annulled  the  de- 
cree of  divorce  he  had  issued  for  the  elements  at  the  begin- 
ning. But  the  solution  here  too  is  found,  not  in  the 
theoretical,  but  in  the  practical,  sphere ;  for  he  never  retracts 
his  assertion  that  the  elements  are  distinct  and  antagonistic. 
But  even  so  his  problem  is  defined  rather  than  solved;  for 
after  the  elements  have  been  brought  within  microscopic 
distance  of  each  other  in  the  mixture,  since  like  can  act  only 
on  like,  the  narrow  space  that  separates  them  is  still  an 
impassable  gulf.1 

Anaxagoras  endowed  his  infinitely  numerous  substances 
with  the  same  characters  of  fixity  and  contrariety  that  mark 
the  four  elements  of  Empedocles.  For  him,  therefore,  the 
difficulty  of  securing  unity  and  co-operation  in  an  effective 
copula  is,  if  that  be  possible,  further  aggravated.  His  grasp 
of  the  problem,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  relatively  small 
body  of  documentary  evidence,  was  not  so  sure  as  that  of 
Empedocles,  though  he  employed  in  general  the  same 
means  for  its  solution.  He  too  postulates  a  mixture  of  all 
substances,  more  consciously  and  definitely  indeed  than  his 

i  This  statement  is,  of  course,  figurative,  since  Empedocles  denied  the  existence 
of  a  void. 


220  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

predecessor.  Believing  that  only  like  can  act  on  like,1  he  is 
led  to  assume  not  only  an  infinite  multiplicity  of  substances, 
but  also  their  complete  mixture,  so  that  everything,  however 
small,  contains  a  portion  of  every  other.  Food,  for  example, 
however  seeming-simple,  nourishes  the  most  diverse  tissues 
of  the  body.  Thus  we  discover  in  the  universal  mixture  of 
substances  the  basis  for  co-operation  and  interaction. 

Anaxagoras,  therefore,  like  Empedocles,  feels  the  need  of 
bridging  the  chasm  which  he  has  assumed  to  exist  between 
his  distinct  substances.  Their  failure  is  alike  great,  and 
is  due  to  the  presuppositions  they  inherited  from  the  Ele- 
atic  conception  of  a  severe  homogeneity  which  implies  an 
absolute  difference  from*  everything  else.  The  embarrass- 
ment of  Anaxagoras  increases  with  the  introduction  of  the 
NoO?.  This  agency  was  conceived  with  a  view  to  explaining 
the  formation  of  the  world ;  that  is,  with  a  view  to  mediating 
between  the  myriad  substances  in  their  essential  aloofness 
and  effecting  the  harmonious  concord  of  concrete  things. 
While,  even  on  the  basis  of  a  universal  mixture,  the  function 
of  the  Not)?  was  foredoomed  to  failure,  its  task  was  made  more 
difficult  still  by  the  definition  given  to  its  nature.  According 
to  Anaxagoras  it  was  the  sole  exception  to  the  composite 
character  of  things;  it  is  absolutely  pure  and  simple  in 
nature.2  By  its  definition,  then,  it  is  prevented  from  accom- 
plishing the  work  it  was  contrived  to  do ;  and  hence  we  can- 
not be  surprised  at  the  lamentations  raised  by  Plato  and 
Aristotle  about  the  failure  of  Anaxagoras  to  employ  the 

1 1  cannot  now  undertake  a  defense  of  this  statement,  which  runs  counter  to  cer- 
tain ancient  reports,  but  must  reserve  a  full  discussion  for  my  account  of  physical 
interaction. 

2  The  motive  for  making  this  assumption  was  clearly  the  desire  to  make  of  the 
Nous  the  prime  mover  in  the  world  while  exempting  it  from  reaction  on  the  part  of 
the  world,  which  would  have  been  unavoidable  if  its  nature  had  contained  parts  of 
other  things.  It  is  the  same  problem  of  "touching  without  being  touched  in  return" 
that  led  Aristotle  to  a  similar  definition  of  God  and  of  the  rational  soul.  The  same 
difficulty  besets  the  absolutely  "simple"  soul  of  Plato's  Phaedo  and  the  causality  of 
the  Ideas. 


LOGIC  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY    221 

agency  he  had  introduced.  To  be  sure,  the  Nou?  is  no  more 
a  deus  ex  machina  than  were  the  ideas  of  Plato  or  the  God 
of  Aristotle.  They  all  labored  under  the  same  restrictions. 

The  Atomists  followed  with  the  same  recognition  of  the 
Many,  in  the  infinitely  various  kinds  of  atoms;  but  it  was 
tempered  by  the  assumption  of  an  essential  homogeneity. 
One  atom  is  distinguished  from  another  by  characteristics 
due  to  its  spatial  relations.  Mass  and  weight  are  propor- 
tional to  size.  Aristotle  reports  that,  though  things  and 
atoms  have  differences,  it  is  not  in  virtue  of  their  differences, 
but  in  virtue  of  their  essential  identity,  that  they  interact.1 
There  is  thus  introduced  a  distinction  which  runs  nearly,  but 
not  quite,  parallel  to  that  between  primary  and  secondary 
qualities.2  Primary  qualities  are  those  of  size,  shape,  and 
perhaps3  position;  all  others  are  secondary.  On  the  other 
hand,  that  which  is  common  to  all  atoms  is  their  corporeity, 
which  does  indeed  define  itself  with  reference  to  the  primary 
(spatial)  qualities,  but  not  alike  in  all.  The  atoms  of  which 
the  world  is  constituted  are  alike  in  essential  nature,  but 
they  differ  most  widely  in  position. 

It  is  the  void  that  breaks  up  the  unity  of  the  world  — 
atomizes  it,  if  we  may  use  the  expression.  It  is  the  basis  of 
all  discontinuity.  Atoms  and  void  are  thus  polar  extremes 
reciprocally  exclusive.  The  atoms  in  their  utter  isolation 
in  space  are  incapable  of  producing  a  world.  In  order  to 
bridge  the  chasm  between  atom  and  atom,  recourse  is  had 
to  motion  eternal,  omnipresent,  and  necessary.  This  it 
is  that  annihilates  distances.  In  the  course  of  their  motion 
atoms  collide,  and  in  their  impact  one  upon  the  other  the 

1  ARISTOTLE,  De  Generatione  et  Corruptione,  323b  10  f. 

2  We  have  seen  that  this  distinction  was  latent  in  Anaximenes's  process  of  rare- 
faction and  condensation.     For  other  matters  see  CHAIGNET,  Histoire  de  la  Psy- 
chologie,  Vol.  I,  p.  114,  whose  account,  however,  needs  to  be  corrected  in  some 
particulars. 

3 1  say  "perhaps"  because  ancient  reports  differ  as  to  the  precise  relation  of  posi- 
tion and  arrangement  to  the  distinction  between  qualities,  primary  and  secondary. 


222  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

Atomists  find  the  precise  mode  of  co-operation  by  which  the 
world  is  formed.1  To  this  agency  are  due  what  Lucretius 
happily  called  "generating  motions." 

The  problem,  however,  so  insistently  pursued  the  philoso- 
phers of  this  time  that  the  Atomists  did  not  content  them- 
selves with  this  solution,  satisfactory  as  modern  science  has 
pretended  to  consider  it.  They  followed  the  lead  of  Emped- 
ocles  and  Anaxagoras  in  postulating  a  widespread,  if  not 
absolutely  universal,  mixture.  Having  on  principle  excluded 
"essential"  differences  among  the  atoms,  the  impossibility  of 
finally  distinguishing  essential  and  non-essential  had  its 
revenge.  Important  as  the  device  of  mixture  was  to 
Empedocles  and  Anaxagoras,  just  so  unmeaning  ought  it  to 
have  been  in  the  Atomic  philosophy,  provided  that  the 
hypothesis  could  accomplish  what  was  claimed  for  it.  It  is  not 
necesary  to  reassert  that  the  assumption  of  "individua,"  utterly 
alienated  one  from  the  other  by  a  void,  rendered  the  problem 
of  the  copula  insoluble  for  the  Atomists. 

Diogenes  of  Apollonia  is  commonly  treated  contemptu- 
ously as  a  mere  reactionary  who  harked  back  to  Anaximenes 
and  had  no  significance  of  his  own.  The  best  that  can  be 
said  of  such  an  attitude  is  that  it  regards  philosophical 
theories  as  accidental  utterances  of  individuals,  naturally 
well  or  ill  endowed,  who  happen  to  express  conclusions  with 
which  men  in  after  times  agree  or  disagree.  A  philosophical 
tenet  is  an  atom,  set  somewhere  in  a  vacuum,  utterly  out  of  rela- 
tion to  everything  else.  But  it  is  impossible  to  see  how,  on  this 
theory,  any  system  of  thought  should  possess  any  significance 
for  anybody,  or  how  there  should  be  any  progress  even,  or 
retardation. 

Viewed  entirely  from  without,  the  doctrine  of  Diogenes 
would  seem  to  be  substantially  a  recrudescence  of  that  of 

1  This  is  only  another  instance  of  what  ME.  VENN  (Empirical  Logic,  p.  56)  has 
wittily  alluded  to  as  "screwing  up  the  cause  and  the  effect  into  close  juxtaposition." 


LOGIC  OP  THE  PRE-SOCRATIO  PHILOSOPHY    223 


Anaximenes.  Air  is  once  more  the  element  or  apxtf  out  of 
which  all  proceeds  and  into  which  all  returns.  Again  the  pro- 
cess of  transformation  is  seen  in  rarefaction  and  condensation  ; 
and  the  attributes  of  substance  are  those  which  were  com- 
mon to  the  early  hylozoists.  But  there  is  present  a  keen 
sense  of  a  problem  unknown  to  Anaximenes.  What  the 
early  philosopher  asserted  in  the  innocence  of  the  youth  of 
thought,  the  later  physiologist  reiterates  with  emphasis 
because  he  believes  that  the  words  are  words  of  life. 

The  motive  for  recurring  to  the  earlier  system  is  supplied 
by  the  imperious  demand  for  a  copula  which  had  so  much 
distressed  Empedocles,  Anaxagoras,  and  the  Atomists.  And 
here  we  are  not  left  to  conjecture,  but  are  able  to  refer  to 
the  ipsissima  verba  of  our  philosopher.  After  a  brief  pro- 
logue, in  which  he  stated  that  one's  starting-point  must  be 
beyond  dispute,  he  immediately  1  turned  to  his  theme  in  these 
words:2  "In  my  opinion,  to  put  the  whole  matter  in  a  nut- 
shell, all  things  are  derived  by  alteration  from  the  same 
substance,  and  indeed  all  are  one  and  the  same.  And  this 
is  altogether  evident.  For  if  the  things  that  now  exist  in 
the  world  —  earth  and  water  and  air  and  fire  and  whatsoever 
else  appears  to  exist  in  this  world  —  if,  I  say,  any  one  of 
these  were  different  from  the  other,  different  that  is  to  say 
in  its  proper  peculiar  nature,  and  did  not  rather,  being  one 
and  the  same,  change  and  alter  in  many  ways,  then  in  no- 
wise would  things  be  able  to  mix  with  one  another,  nor  would 
help  or  harm  come  to  one  from  the  other,  nor  would  any 
plant  spring  from  the  earth,  nor  any  other  living  thing  come 
into  being,  if  things  were  not  so  constituted  as  to  be  one 
and  the  same." 

These  words  contain  a  singularly  interesting  expression 

i  Simplicius  says  ev0v?  ncra  TO  irpooifuov  ;  see  DIELS,  Die  Fragmente  der  Vorsokra* 
tiker  (Berlin,  1903),  p.  347,  1.  18. 
2Fr.  2,  DIELS. 


224  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

of  the  need  of  restoring  the  integrity  of  the  process  which 
had  been  lost  in  the  effort  to  solve  the  problem  of  the  One 
and  the  Many  without  abandoning  the  point  of  view  won  by 
the  Eleatics.  Aristotle  and  Theophrastus  paraphrase  and 
sum  up  the  passage  above  quoted  by  saying1  that  interaction 
is  impossible  except  on  the  assumption  that  all  the  world  is 
one  and  the  same.  Hence  it  is  manifest,  as  was  said  above, 
that  the  return  of  Diogenes  to  the  monistic  system  of  Anax- 
imenes  had  for  its  conscious  motive  the  avoidance  of  the 
dualism  that  had  sprung  up  in  the  interval  and  had  rendered 
futile  the  multiplied  efforts  to  secure  an  effective  copula. 

We  should  note,  however,  that  in  the  attempt  thus  made 
to  undo  the  work  of  several  generations  Diogenes  retained 
the  principle  which  had  wrought  the  mischief.  We  have 
before  remarked  that  the  germ  of  the  Atomic  philosophy 
was  contained  in  the  process  of  rarefaction  and  condensation. 
Hence,  in  accepting  it  along  with  the  remainder  of  Anax- 
imenes's  theory,  the  fatal  assumption  was  reinstated.  It  is 
the  story  of  human  systems  in  epitome.  The  superstructure 
is  overthrown,  and  with  the  debris  a  new  edifice  is  built  upon 
the  old  foundations. 

In  the  entire  course  of  philosophical  thought  from  Thales 
onward  the*  suggestion  of  an  opposition  between  the  subject 
and  the  predicate  had  appeared.  It  has  often  been  said  that 
it  was  expressed  by  the  search  for  a  (frvais,  or  a  true  nature, 
in  contrast  with  the  world  as  practically  accepted.  There  is 
a  certain  truth  in  this  view ;  for  the  effort  to  attain  a  predi- 
cate which  does  not  merely  repeat  the  subject  does  imply 
that  there  is  an  opposition.  But  the  efforts  made  to  return 
from  the  predicate  to  the  subject,  in  a  deductive  movement, 
shows  that  the  difference  was  not  believed  to  be  absolute. 
This  is  true,  however,  only  of  those  fields  of  speculation 
that  lie  next  to  the  highways  of  practical  life,  which  lead 

i  See  DIELS,  Fragmente  der  Vorsokratiker,  p.  343, 1.  2 ;  p.  344, 1.  27. 


LOGIC  OF  THE  PRE-SOCRATIC  PHILOSOPHY    225 

equally  in  both  directions,  or,  let  us  rather  say,  which  unite 
while  they  mark  separation.  In  the  sphere  of  abstract  ideas 
the  sense  of  embarrassment  was  deep  and  constantly  growing 
deeper.  The  reconstruction,  accomplished  on  lower  levels, 
did  not  attain  unto  those  heights.  Men  doubted  conclusions, 
but  did  not  think  to  demand  the  credentials  of  their  common 
presuppositions. 

Side  by  side  with  the  later  philosophers  whom  we  have 
mentioned  there  walked  men  whom  we  are  wont  to  call  the 
Sophists.  They  were  the  journalists  and  pamphleteers  of 
those  days,  men  who,  without  dealing  profoundly  with  any 
special  problem,  familiarized  themselves  with  the  generali- 
zations of  workers  in  special  fields  and  combined  these  ideas 
for  the  entertainment  of  the  public.  They  were  neither 
philosophers  nor  physicists,  but,  like  some  men  whom  we 
might  cite  from  our  own  times,  endeavored  to  popularize 
the  teachings  of  both.  Naturally  they  seized  upon  the  most 
sweeping  generalizations  and  the  preconceptions  which  dis- 
closed themselves  in  manifold  forms.  Just  as  naturally  they 
had  no  eyes  with  which  to  detect  the  significance  of  the 
besetting  problems  at  which,  in  matters  more  concrete,  the 
masters  were  toiling.  Hence  the  contradictions,  revealed  in 
the  analysis  we  have  just  given  of  the  philosophy  of  the  age, 
stood  out  in  utter  nakedness. 

The  result  was  inevitable.  The  inability  to  discover  a 
unitary  predicate,  more  still,  the  failure  to  attain  a  working 
copula,  led  directly  to  the  denial  of  the  possibility  of  predi- 
cation. There  was  no  truth.  Granted  that  it  existed,  it 
could  not  be  known.  Even  if  known,  it  could  not  be  com- 
municated. In  these  incisive  words  of  Gorgias  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  ineffectual  effort  to  establish  a  logic  of  science  is 
clearly  stated.  But  the  statement  is  happily  only  the  half- 
truth,  which  is  almost  a  complete  falsehood.  It  takes  no 
account  of  the  indications,  everywhere  present,  of  a  needed 


226  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

reconstruction.  Least  of  all  does  it  catch  the  meaning  of 
such  a  demand. 

The  Sophists  did  not,  however,  merely  repeat  in  abstract 
form  the  teachings  of  the  philosophers.  It  matters  not 
whether  they  originated  the  movement  or  not;  at  all  events 
they  were  pioneers  in  the  field  of  moral  philosophy.  Here 
it  was  that  they  chiefly  drew  the  inferences  from  the  dis- 
tinction between  <j>va-€t  and  vofico.  Nothing  could  have  been 
more  effective  in  disengaging  the  firmly  rooted  moral  pre- 
possessions and  rendering  them  amenable  to  philosophy. 
Just  here,  at  last,  we  catch  a  hint  of  the  significance  of  the 
logical  process.  In  a  striking  passage  in  Plato's  Protagoras,1 
which  one  is  fain  to  regard  as  an  essentially  true  reproduction 
of  a  discourse  by  that  great  man,  Justice  and  Reverence 
are  accorded  true  validity.  On  inquiring  to  what  character- 
istic this  honorable  distinction  is  due,  we  find  that  it  does 
not  reside  in  themselves ;  it  is  due  to  the  assumption  that  a 
state  must  exist. 

Here,  then,  in  a  word,  is  the  upshot  of  the  logical 
movement.  Logical  predicates  are  essentially  hypothetical, 
deriving  their  validity  from  the  interest  that  moves  men  to 
affirm  them.  When  they  lose  this  hypothetical  character, 
as  terms  within  a  volitional  system,  and  set  up  as  entities  at 
large,  they  cease  to  function  and  forfeit  their  right  to  exist. 

1320  c  f. 


X 

VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS 

THE  purpose  of  this  discussion  is  to  supply  the  main  out- 
lines of  a  theory  of  value  based  upon  analysis  of  the  valua- 
tion-process from  the  logical  point  of  view.  The  general 
principle  which  we  shall  seek  to  establish  is  that  judgments 
of  value,  whether  passed  upon  things  or  upon  modes  of 
conduct,  are  essentially  objective  in  import,  and  that  they 
are  reached  through  a  process  of  valuation  which  is  essen- 
tially of  the  same  logical  character  as  the  judgment-process 
whereby  conclusions  of  physical  fact  are  established — 
in  a  word,  that  the  valuation-process,  issuing  in  the  finished 
judgment  of  value  expressive  of  the  judging  person's  defini- 
tive attitude  toward  the  thing  in  question,  is  constructive  of 
an  order  of  reality  in  the  same  sense  as,  in  current  theories 
of  knowledge,  is  the  judgment  of  sense-perception  and  sci- 
ence. Our  method  of  procedure  to  this  end  will  be  that  of 
assuming,  and  adhering  to  as  consistently  as  possible,  the 
standpoint  of  the  individual  in  the  process  of  deliberating 
upon  an  ethical  or  economic  problem  (for,  as  we  shall  hold, 
all  values  properly  so  called  are  either  ethical  or  economic), 
and  of  ascertaining,  as  accurately  as  may  be,  the  meaning  of 
the  deliberative  or  evaluating  process  and  of  the  various  fac- 
tors in  it  as  these  are  presented  in  the  individual's  apprehen- 
sion. It  is  in  this  sense  that  our  procedure  will  be  logical 
rather  than  psychological.  We  shall  be  concerned  to  deter- 
mine the  meaning  of  the  object  of  valuation  as  object,  of  the 
standard  of  value  as  standard,  and  of  the  valued  object  as 
valued,  in  terms  of  the  individual's  own  apprehension  of 
these,  rather  than  to  ascertain  the  nature  and  conditions  of 
his  apprehensions  of  these  considered  as  psychical  events. 

227 


228  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

Our  attention  will  throughout  be  directed  to  these  factors 
or  phases  of  the  valuation-process  in  their  functional  aspect 
of  determinants  of  the  valuing  agent's  practical  attitude,  and 
never,  excepting  for  purposes  of  incidental  illustration  and 
in  a  very  general  and  tentative  way,  as  events  in  conscious- 
ness mediated  by  more  "elementary"  psychical  processes. 
The  results  which  we  shall  gain  by  adhering  to  this  method 
will  enable  us  to  see  not  merely  that  our  judgments  of  value 
are  in  function  and  meaning  objective,  but  also  that  our 
judgments  of  sense-perception  and  science  are,  as  such, 
capable  of  satisfactory  interpretation  only  as  being  incidental 
to  the  attainment  and  progressive  reconstruction  of  judg- 
ments of  value. 

The  first  three  main  divisions  will  be  given  over  to  estab- 
lishing the  objectivity  of  content  and  function  of  judgments 
of  value.  The  fourth  division  will  present  a  detailed  analy- 
sis of  the  two  types  of  judgment  of  value,  the  ethical  and 
economic,  defining  them  and  relating  them  to  each  other, 
and  correlating  them  in  the  manner  just  suggested  with 
judgment  of  the  physical  type.  After  considering,  in  the 
fifth  part,  certain  general  objections  to  the  positions  thus 
staled,  w.e  shall  proceed  in  the  sixth  and  concluding  division 
to  define  the  function  of  the  consciousness  of  value  in  the 
economy  of  life.1 

I 

The  system  of  judgments  which  defines  what  one  calls 
the  objective  order  of  things  is  inevitably  unique  for  each 
particular  individual.  No  two  men  can  view  the  world  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  same  theoretical  and  practical  inter- 

i  Considerations  of  space  as  well  as  circumstances  attending  the  immediate 
preparation  of  this  discussion  for  the  press  have  precluded  any  but  the  most  general 
and  casual  reference  to  the  recent  literature  of  the  subject.  Much  of  this  literature 
only  imperfectly  distinguishes  the  logical  and  psychological  points  of  view,  so  that 
critical  reference  to  it,  unaccompanied  by  detailed  restatement  and  analysis  of  the 
positions  criticised,  would  be  useless. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS          229 

ests,  nor  can  any  two  proceed  in  the  work  of  gaining  for 
themselves  knowledge  of  the  world  with  precisely  equal 
degrees  of  skill  and  accuracy.  Each  must  be  prompted  and 
guided,  in  the  construction  of  his  knowledge  of  single  things 
and  of  the  system  in  which  they  have  their  being,  by  his 
own  particular  interests  and  aims ;  and  even  when  one  per- 
son in  a  measure  shares  in  the  interests  and  aims  of  another, 
the  rate  and  manner  of  procedure  will  not  be  the  same  for 
both,  nor  will  the  knowledge  gained  be  for  both  equally 
systematic  in  arrangement  or  in  interrelation  of  its  parts. 
Each  man  lives  in  a  world  of  his  own — a  world,  indeed, 
identical  in  certain  fundamental  respects  with  the  worlds 
which  his  fellow-men  have  constructed  for  themselves,  but 
one  nevertheless  necessarily  unique  through  and  through 
because  each  man  is  a  unique  individual.  There  is,  doubt- 
less, a  "social  currency"  of  objects  which  implies  a  certain 
identity  of  meaning  in  objects  as  experienced  by  different 
individuals.  The  existence  of  society  presupposes,  and  its 
evolution  in  turn  develops  and  extends,  a  system  of  generally 
accepted  objects  and  relations.  Nevertheless,  the  "  socially 
current  object "  is,  as  such,  an  abstraction  just  as  the  uniform 
social  individual  is  likewise  an  abstraction.  The  only  con- 
crete object  ever  actually  known  or  in  any  wise  experienced 
by  any  person  is  the  object  as  constructed  by  that  person  in 
accordance  with  his  own  aims  and  purposes,  and  in  which 
there  is,  therefore,  a  large  and  important  share  of  meaning 
which  is  significant  to  no  one  else. 

It  is  needless  in  this  discussion  to  dwell  at  length  upon 
the  general  principle  of  recent  "functional"  psychology,  that 
practical  ends  are  the  controlling  factors  in  the  acquisition 
of  our  knowledge  of  objective  things.  We  shall  take  for 
granted  the  truth  of  the  general  proposition  that  cognition, 
in  whatever  sphere  of  science  or  of  practical  life,  is  essen- 
tially teleological  in  the  sense  of  being  incidental  always, 


230  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

more  or  less  directly,  to  the  attainment  of  ends.  Cognition, 
as  the  apperceptive  or  attentive  process,  is  essentially  the 
process  of  scrutinizing  a  situation  (whether  theoretical  or 
practical)  with  a  view  to  determining  the  availability  for  one's 
intended  purpose  of  such  objects  and  conditions  as  the 
situation  may  present.  The  objects  and  conditions  thus 
determined  will  be  made  use  of  or  ignored,  counted  upon  as 
advantageous  or  guarded  against  as  unfavorable — in  a  word, 
responded  to — in  ways  suggested  by  their  character  as 
ascertained  through  reference  to  the  interest  in  question. 
In  this  sense,  then,  objective  things  as  known  by  individual 
persons  are  essentially  complex  stimuli  whose  proper  func- 
tion and  reason  for  being  it  is  to  elicit  useful  responses  in 
the  way  of  conduct — responses  conducive  to  the  realization 
of  ends. 

From  this  point  of  view,  then,  the  difference  between  one 
person's  knowledge  of  a  particular  object  and  another's 
signifies  (1)  a  difference  between  these  persons'  original 
purposes  in  setting  out  to  gain  knowledge  of  the  object,  and 
(2)  consequently  a  difference  between  their  present  ways 
of  acting  with  reference  to  the  object.  The  bare  object  as 
socially  current  is,  at  best,  for  each  individual  simply  a  ground 
upon  which  subsequent  construction  may  be  made;  and  the 
subsequent  construction  which  each  individual  is  prompted 
by  his  circumstances  and  is  able  to  work  out  in  judgment 
first  makes  the  object,  for  this  individual,  real  and  for  his 
purposes  complete. 

Now,  it  is  our  primary  intention  to  show  that  objects  are, 
in  cases  of  a  certain  important  class,  not  yet  ready  to  serve 
the  person  who  knows  them  in  their  proper  character  of 
stimuli,  when  they  have  been,  even  exhaustively,  defined  in 
merely  physical  terms.  It  is  very  often  not  enough  that  the 
dimensions  of  an  object  and  its  physical  properties,  even  the 
more  recondite  ones  as  well  as  those  more  commonly  under- 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  231 

stood  —  it  is  often  not  enough  for  the  purposes  of  an  agent 
that  these  characters  should  make  up  the  whole  sum  of  his 
knowledge  of  the  object  in  question.  A  measure  of  knowl- 
edge in  terms  of  physical  categories  is  often  only  a  begin- 
ning— the  result  of  a  preliminary  stage  of  the  entire  process 
of  teleological  determination,  which  must  be  carried  through 
before  the  object  of  attention  can  be  satisfactorily  known. 
In  the  present  study  of  the  logic  of  valuation  we  shall  be 
occupied  exclusively  with  the  discussion  of  cases  of  this  kind. 
In  our  judgments  of  sense-perception  and  physical  science 
we  have  presented  to  us  material  objects  in  their  physical 
aspect.  When  these  latter  are  inadequate  to  suggest  or  war- 
rant overt  conduct,  our  knowledge  of  them  must  be  supple- 
mented and  reconstructed  in  ways  presently  to  be  specified. 
It  is  in  the  outcome  of  judgment-processes  in  which  this 
work  of  supplementing  and  reconstructing  is  carried  through 
that  the  consciousness  of  value,  in  the  proper  sense,  arises, 
and  these  processes,  then,  are  those  which  we  shall  here  con- 
sider under  the  name  of  "processes  of  valuation."  They  will 
therefore  best  be  approached  through  specification  of  the 
ways  in  which  our  physical  judgments  may  be  inadequate. 

Let  us,  then,  assume,  as  has  been  indicated,  that  the  pro- 
cess of  acquiring  knowledge — that  is  to  say,  the  process  of 
judgment  or  attention — is  in  every  case  of  its  occurrence 
incidental  to  the  attainment  of  an  end.  We  must  make  this 
assumption  without  attempting  formally  to  justify  it — though 
in  the  course  of  our  discussion  it  will  be  abundantly  illus- 
trated. Let  us,  in  accordance  with  this  view,  think  of  the 
typical  judgment-process  as  proceeding,  in  the  main,  as  fol- 
lows: First  of  all  must  come  a  sense  of  need  or  deficiency, 
which  may,  on  occasion,  be  preceded  by  a  more  or  less  violent 
and  sudden  shock  to  the  senses,  forcibly  turning  one's  atten- 
tion to  the  need  of  immediate  action.  By  degrees  this  sense 
of  need  will  grow  more  definite  and  come  to  express  itself  in 


232  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

a  more  or  less  "  clear  and  distinct "  image  of  an  end,  toward 
which  end  the  agent  is  drawn  by  desire  and  to  which  he 
looks  with  much  or  little  of  emotion.  The  emergence  of 
the  end  into  consciousness  immediately  makes  possible  and 
occasions  definite  analysis  of  the  situation  in  which  the  end 
must  be  worked  out.  Salient  features  of  the  situation  forth- 
with are  noticed — whether  useful  things  or  favoring  condi- 
tions, or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  absence  of  any  such.  Thus 
predicates  and  then  subjects  for  many  subsidiary  judgments 
in  the  comprehensive  judgment-process  emerge  together  in 
action  and  interaction  upon  each  other.  The  predicates, 
developed  out  of  the  general  end  toward  which  the  agent 
strives,  afford  successive  points  of  view  for  fresh  analyses  of 
the  situation.  The  logical  subjects  thus  discovered — objects 
of  attention  and  knowledge — require,  on  the  other  hand,  as 
they  are  scrutinized  and  judged,  modification  and  re-exami- 
nation of  the  end.  The  end  grows  clearer  and  fuller  of 
detail  as  the  predicates  or  implied  ("constituent")  ideas 
which  are  developed  out  of  it  are  distinguished  from  each 
other  and  used  in  making  one's  inventory  of  the  objective 
situation.  Conversely,  the  situation  loses  its  first  aspect  of 
confusion  and  takes  on  more  and  more  the  aspect  of  an 
orderly  assemblage  of  objects  and  conditions,  useful,  indif- 
ferent, and  adverse,  by  means  of  which  the  end  may  in 
greater  or  less  measure  be  attained  or  must,  in  however 
greatly  modified  a  form,  be  defeated.  Now,  in  this  develop- 
ment of  the  judgment-process,  it  must  be  observed,  the  end 
must  be  more  or  less  clearly  and  consistently  conceived 
throughout  as  an  activity,  if  the  objective  means  of  action 
which  have  been  determined  in  the  process  are  not  to  be,  at  the 
last,  separate  and  unrelated  data  still  requiring  co-ordination. 
If  the  end  has  been  so  conceived,  the  means  will  inevitably  be 
known  as  members  of  a  mechanical  system,  since  the  predi- 
cates by  which  they  have  been  determined  have  at  every 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  233 

point  involved  this  factor  of  amenability  to  co-ordination. 
The  judgment-process,  if  properly  conducted  and  brought  to 
a  conclusion,  must  issue  at  the  end  in  the  functional  unity  of 
a  finished  plan  of  conduct  with  a  perfected  mechanical 
co-ordination  of  the  available  means. 

We  have  now  to  see  that  much  more  may  be  involved  in 
such  a  process  as  this  than  has  been  explicitly  stated  in  our 
brief  analysis.  For  the  end  itself  may  be  a  matter  of  delib- 
eration, just  as  must  be  the  physical  means  of  accomplishing 
it;  and,  again,  the  means  may  call  for  scrutiny  and  deter- 
mination from  other  points  of  view  than  the  physical  and 
mechanical.  The  final  action  taken  at  the  end  may  express 
the  outcome  of  deliberate  ethical  and  economic  judgment 
as  well  as  of  judgments  in  the  sphere  of  sense-perception 
and  physical  science.  Let  us  consider,  for  example,  that 
one's  end  is  the  construction  of  a  house  upon  a  certain  plot 
of  ground.  This  end  expresses  the  felt  need  of  a  more  com- 
fortable or  more  reputable  abode,  and  has  so  much  of  gen- 
eral presumption  in  its  favor.  There  may,  however,  be 
many  reasons  for  hesitation.  The  cost  in  time  or  money  or 
materials  on  hand  may  tax  one's  resources  and  injuriously 
curtail  one's  activities  along  other  lines.  And  there  may  be 
ethical  reasons  why  the  plan  should  not  be  carried  out.  The 
house  may  shut  off  a  pleasing  prospect  from  the  view  of  the 
entire  neighborhood  and  serve  no  better  end  than  the  grati- 
fication of  its  owner's  selfish  vanity.  It  will  cost  a  sum  of 
money  which  might  be  used  in  paying  just,  though  outlawed^ 
debts. 

Now,  from  the  standpoint  of  such  problems  as  these  the 
fullest  possible  preliminary  knowledge  of  the  physical  and 
mechanical  fitness  of  our  means  must  still  be  very  abstract 
and  general.  It  would  be  of  use  in  any  undertaking  like  the 
one  we  have  supposed,  but  it  is  not  sufficient  in  so  far  as  the 
problem  is  one's  own  problem,  concrete,  particular,  and  so 


234  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

unique.  One  may,  of  course,  proceed  to  the  stage  of  physi- 
cal judgment  without  having  settled  the  ethical  problems 
which  may  have  presented  themselves  at  the  outset.  The 
end  may  be  entertained  tentatively  as  a  hypothesis  until 
certain  mechanical  problems  have  been  dealt  with.  But 
manifestly  this  is  only  postponement  of  the  issue.  The  agent 
is  still  quite  unprepared,  even  after  the  means  have  been  so 
far  determined,  to  take  the  first  step  in  the  execution  of  the 
plan ;  indeed,  his  uncertainty  is  probably  only  the  more  har- 
assing than  before.  Moreover,  the  economic  problems  in 
the  case  are  now  more  sharply  defined,  and  these  for  the  time 
being  still  further  darken  counsel.  Manifestly  the  need  for 
deliberation  is  at  this  ppint  quite  as  urgent  as  the  need  for 
physical  determination  can  ever  be,  and  the  need  is  evidenced 
in  the  same  way  by  the  actual  arrest  and  postponement  of 
overt  conduct.  The  agent,  despite  his  physical  knowledge, 
is  not  yet  free  to  embrace  the  end  and,  having  done  so,  use 
thereto  the  means  at  his  disposal.  It  is  plainly  impossible 
to  use  the  physical  means  until  one  knows  in  terms  of  Sub- 
stance and  Attribute  or  Cause  and  Effect,  or  whatever  other 
physical  categories  one  may  please,  what  manner  of  behavior 
may  be  expected  of  them.  So  likewise  is  it  as  truly  impos- 
sible, for  ©ne  intellectually  and  morally  capable  of  appreciat- 
ing problems  of  a  more  advanced  and  complex  sort,  to  exploit 
the  physical  properties  thus  discovered  until  ethical  deter- 
mination of  the  end  and  economic  determination  of  the  means 
have  been  completed.1 

There  are,  then,  we  conclude,  cases  in  which  physical 
determination  of  the  means  is  by  itself  not  a  sufficient  prepa- 

1  In  order  to  avoid  complicating  the  problems,  we  have  here  employed  the  com- 
mon notion  that  the  physical  world,  physical  object,  and  property  may  be  taken  for 
granted  as  possible  adequate  contents  of  judgment,  and  that  the  problem  is  only  as 
to  the  objectivity  of  economic  and  ethical  contents.  Of  course  we  may,  in  the 
end,  come  to  believe  that  the  "  physical "  object  is  itself  an  economic  construct,  in 
the  large  sense  of  "economic;"  that  is,  an  instrument  of  an  effective  or  successful 
experience.  Thus  in  terms  of  the  illustration  used  above,  in  the  attitude  of  enter- 
taining in  a  general  way  the  plan  of  building  a  house  of  some  sort  or  other,  one  may 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  235 

ration  for  conduct — in  which  there  are  ethical  and  economic 
problems  which  delay  the  application  of  the  physical  means  to 
the  end  to  which  they  may  be  physically  adapted.  Indeed, 
so  much  as  this  may  well  appear  as  sufficiently  obvious 
without  extended  illustration.  Everyone  knows  that  it  is 
nearly  always  necessary,  in  undertaking  any  work  in  which 
material  things  are  used  as  means,  to  count  the  cost;  and 
everyone  knows  likewise  that  not  every  end  that  is  in  any 
way  attractive  and  within  one's  reach  may  without  more  ado 
be  taken  as  an  object  of  settled  desire  and  effort.  It  is 
indeed  needless  to  elaborate  these  commonplaces  in  the 
sense  in  which  they  are  commonly  understood.  However, 
such  is  not  our  present  purpose.  Our  purpose  is  the  more 
specific  one  of  showing  that  the  meaning  of  Objectivity  must 
be  widened  so  as  to  include  (1)  the  "universe"  of  ends  in 
their  ethical  aspect  and  (2)  the  economic  aspect  of  the 
means  of  action,  as  well  as  (3)  the  physical  aspect  to  which 
the  character  of  Objectivity  is  commonly  restricted.  We 
shall  maintain  that  these  are  parts  or  phases  of  a  complete 
conception  of  Reality,  and  that  of  them,  consequently,  Objec- 
tivity must  be  predicated  for  every  essential  reason  connoted 
by  such  characterization  of  the  world  of  things  "external" 
to  the  senses.  It  has  been  with  this  conclusion  in  mind, 
then,  that  we  have  sought  to  emphasize  the  frequent  serious 
inadequacy,  for  practical  purposes,  of  the  merely  physical 
determination  of  the  means  in  one's  environment. 

The  principle  thus  suggested  would  imply  that  the 
ethical  and  economic  stages  in  the  one  inclusive  process 
of  reflective  attention  should  be  regarded  as  involving, 

have  before  him  various  building  materials  the  ascertained  qualities  of  which  are, 
it  may  be,  socially  recognized  as  in  a  general  way  fitting  them  for  such  a  use.  There 
is  doubtless  so  much  of  real  foundation  for  the  common  notion  here  referred  to. 
But  along  with  the  definition  of  the  plan  in  ethical  and  economic  judgment,  along 
with  the  determination  actually  to  build  a  house,  and  a  house  of  a  certain  specific 
kind,  must  go  further  determination  of  the  means  in  their  physical  aspects,  a  deter- 
mination which  all  the  while  reacts  into  the  process  of  determination  of  the  end. 
See  below,  p.  246,  note  3. 


236  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

when  they  occur,  the  same  logical  function  of  judgment 
as  is  operative  in  the  sphere  of  sense-perception  and 
the  sciences  generally.  Ethical  and  economic  factors 
must  on  occasion  be  present  at  the  final  choice  and 
shaping  of  one's  course  of  conduct,  along  with  the  physi- 
cal determinations  of  environing  means  and  conditions  which 
one  has  made  in  sense-perception.  There  is,  then,  it  would 
appear,  at  least  a  fair  presumption,  though  not  indeed  an  a 
priori  certainty,  that  these  ethical  and  economic  factors  or 
conditions  have,  like  the  physical,  taken  form  in  a  judgment- 
process  which  will  admit  of  profitable  analysis  in  accordance 
with  whatever  general  theory  of  judgment  one  may  hold  as 
ralid  elsewhere  in  the  field  of  knowledge.  This  presumption 
we  shall  seek  to  verify.  Now,  our  interest  in  thus  determin- 
ing, first  of  all,  the  logical  character  of  these  processes  will 
readily  be  understood  from  this,  that,  in  the  present  view, 
these  are  the  processes,  and  the  only  ones  in  our  experience, 
which  are  properly  to  be  regarded  as  processes  of  Valuation. 
We  shall  hold  that  Valuation,  and  so  all  consciousness  of 
Value,  properly  so  called,  must  be  either  ethical  or  economic; 
that  the  only  conscious  processes  in  which  Values  can  come 
to  definition  are  these  processes  of  ethical  and  economic 
judgment/  The  present  theory  of  Value  is,  then,  essentially 
a  logical  one,  in  the  sense  of  holding  that  Values  are  deter- 
mined in  and  by  a  logical — that  is,  a  judgmental — valuation- 
process  and  in  its  details  is  closely  dependent  upon  the 
general  conception  of  judgment  of  which  the  outlines  have 
been  sketched  above.  Accordingly,  the  exposition  must  pro- 
ceed in  the  following  general  order :  Assuming  the  concep- 
tion of  judgment  which  has  been  presented  (which  our 
discussion  will  in  several  ways  further  illustrate  and  so  tend 
to  confirm),  we  shall  seek  to  show  that  the  determinations 
made  in  ethical  and  economic  judgment  are  in  the  proper 
sense  objective.  This  will  involve,  first  of  all,  a  statement 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  237 

of  the  conditions  under  which  the  ethical  and  economic 
judgments  respectively  arise — which  statement  will  serve  to 
distinguish  the  two  types  of  judgment  from  each  other.  We 
shall  then  proceed  to  the  special  analysis  of  the  ethical  and 
economic  forms  from  the  standpoint  of  our  general  theory 
of  judgment,  thereby  establishing  in  detail  the  judgmental 
character  of  these  parts  of  the  reflective  process.  This 
analysis  will  serve  to  introduce  our  interpretation  of  the 
consciousness  of  Value  as  a  factor  in  the  conduct  and  econo- 
my of  life. 

II 

Let  us  then  define  the  problem  of  the  objective  reference 
of  the  valuational  judgments  by  stating,  as  distinctly  as  may 
be,  the  conditions  by  which  ethical  and  economic  deliberation, 
respectively,  are  prompted.  A  study  of  these  conditions  will 
make  it  easier  to  see  in  what  way  the  judgments  reached  in 
dealing  with  them  can  be  objective. 

When  will  an  end,  presenting  itself  in  consciousness  in 
the  manner  indicated  in  our  brief  analysis  of  the  judgment- 
process,  become  the  center  of  attention,  thereby  checking 
the  advance,  through  investigation  of  the  possible  means,  to 
final  overt  action?  This  is  the  general  statement  of  the 
problem  of  the  typical  ethical  situation.  Manifestly  there 
will  be  no  ethical  deliberation  if  the  imaged  end  at  once 
turns  the  attention  toward  the  environment  of  possible 
means,  instead  of  first  of  all  itself  becoming  the  object 
instead  of  the  director  of  attention;  there  will  be  no  sus- 
pension of  progress  toward  final  action,  excepting  such  as 
may  later  come  through  difficulty  in  the  discovery  and 
co-ordination  of  the  means.  However,  there  are  cases  in 
which  the  emergence  of  the  end  forthwith  is  followed  by  a 
check  to  the  reflective  process,  and  the  agent  shrinks  from 
the  end  presented  in  imagination  as  being,  let  us  say,  one 


238  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

forbidden  by  authority  or  one  repugnant  to  his  own  estab- 
lished standards.  The  end  may  in  such  a  case  disappear  at 
once;  very  often  it  will  insistently  remain.  On  this  latter 
supposition,  the  simplest  possibility  will  be  the  development 
of  a  mere  mechanical  tension,  a  "pull  and  haul"  between 
the  end,  or  properly  the  impulses  which  it  represents,  and 
the  agent's  habit  of  suppressing  impulses  of  the  class  to 
which  the  present  one  is,  perhaps  intuitively,  recognized  as 
belonging.  The  case  is  the  common  one  of  "temptation" 
on  the  one  side  and  "principle"  or  "conscience"  on  the 
other,  and  so  long  as  the  two  forces  remain  thus  in  hard-and- 
fast  opposition  to  each  other  there  can  be  no  ethical  delib- 
eration or  judgment  in  a  proper  sense.  The  standard  or 
habit  may  gain  the  day  by  sheer  mechanical  excess  of  power, 
or  the  new  impulse,  the  temptation,  may  prevail  because  its 
onset  can  break  down  the  mechanical  resistance. 

Out  of  such  a  situation  as  this,  however,  genuine  ethical 
deliberation  may  arise  on  condition  that  standard  and 
"temptation"  can  lose  something  of  their  abstractness  and 
their  hard-and-fast  opposition,  and  develop  into  terms  of 
concrete  meaning.  The  agent  may  come  to  see  that  the 
end  is  in  some  definite  way  of  really  vital  interest  and  too 
important  to  be  put  aside  without  consideration.  He  may, 
of  course,  in  this  fall  into  gross  self -sophistication,  like  the 
drunkard  in  the  classical  instance  who  takes  another  glass 
to  test  his  self-control  and  thereby  gain  assurance,  or  he 
may  act  with  wisdom  and  with  full  sincerity,  like  Dorothea 
Casaubon  when  she  renounced  the  impossible  task  imposed 
by  her  departed  husband.  In  the  moral  life  one  can  ask  or 
hope  for  complete  exemption  from  the  risk  of  self-deception 
with  as  little  reason  as  in  scientific  research.  But  however 
this  may  be,  our  present  interest  is  in  the  method,  not  in  par- 
ticular results  of  ethical  reflection.  Whether  properly  so  in 
a  particular  case  or  not,  the  imaged  end  may  come  to  seem 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PBOCESS  239 

at  least  plausibly  defensible  on  grounds  of  principle  which 
serve  to  sanction  certain  other  modes  of  conduct  to  which  a 
place  is  given  in  the  accepted  scheme  of  life;  or  the  end 
may  simply  press  for  a  relatively  independent  recognition  on 
the  very  general  ground  that  its  emergence  represents  an 
enlargement  and  new  development  of  the  personality.1  The 
end  may  thus  cease  to  stand  in  the  character  of  blind  self- 
assertive  impulse  and  press  its  claim  as  a  positive  means  of 
future  moral  growth,  as  bringing  freedom  from  repressive 
and  enfeebling  restraints  and  as  tending  to  the  reinforce- 
ment of  other  already  valued  modes  of  conduct.  On  the 
other  hand  the  standard  will  cease  to  stand  as  mere  resist- 
ance and  negation  and  may  discover  something  of  its  hidden 
meaning  as  a  product  of  long  experience  and  slow  growth 
and  as  perhaps  a  vital  part  of  the  organization  of  one's  pres- 
ent life,  not  to  be  touched  without  grave  risk. 

Now,  on  whichever  side  the  development  may  first  com- 
mence, a  like  development  must  soon  follow  on  the  other, 
and  it  is  the  action  and  reaction  of  standard  and  prospec- 
tive or  problematic  end  upon  each  other  that  constitutes 
the  process  of  ethical  deliberation  or  judgment.  Just  as 
in  the  typical  judgment-process,  as  sketched  above,  so  also 
here  predicate  and  subject  develop  each  other,  when  once 
they  have  given  over  their  first  antagonism  and  come  to 
the  attitude  of  reasoning  together.  The  predicate  explains 
itself  that  the  subject  or  new  end  may  be  searchingly  and 
fairly  tested;  and  under  this  scrutiny  the  subject  develops 
its  full  meaning  as  a  course  of  conduct,  thereby  prompting 
further  analysis  and  reinterpretation  of  the  standard.  But 
this  is  not  the  place  for  detailed  analysis  of  the  process;2 
here  we  are  concerned  only  to  define  the  type  of  situation, 

1  In  the  moral  life,  as  elsewhere,  the  distinction  of  deduction  and  induction  is 
one  of  degree.    There  is  but  one  type  or  method  of  inference,  though  some  inferences 
may  approach  more  closely  than  do  others  the  limit  of  pure  "  subsumption." 

2  See  IV  below. 


240  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

and  this  we  may  now  do  in  the  following  terms:  The  indis- 
pensable condition  of  ethical  judgment  is  the  presence  in 
the  agent's  mind  of  at  least  two  rival  interesting  ends  or 
systems  of  such  ends.  In  the  foregoing,  the  subject  of  the 
judgment  is  the  new  end  that  has  arisen;  the  predicate  or 
"standard"  is  the  symbol  for  the  old  ends  or  values  which 
in  the  tension  of  the  judgment-process  must  be  brought  to 
more  or  less  explicit  enumeration  —  and,  we  must  add, 
reconstruction  also.  Indeed  it  is  important  even  at  this 
stage  of  our  discussion  to  observe  that  Predicate  and  Stand- 
ard are  not  equivalent  in  meaning.  The  predicate,  or  predi- 
cative side,  of  judgment  is  the  imagery  of  control  in  the 
process,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  develops  with  the  subject 
side;  while  the  term  "Standard"  connotes  the  rigid  fixity 
which  belongs  to  the  inhibiting  concept  or  ideal  in  the  stage 
before  the  judgment-process  proper  can  begin.  The  ethical 
judgment-process  is,  in  a  word,  just  the  process  of  recon- 
structing standards — as  in  its  other  and  corresponding 
aspect  it  is  the  process  of  interpreting  new  ends.  Those  who 
oppose  measures  of  social  reform  or  new  modes  of  conduct 
or  belief  on  alleged  grounds  of  "immorality"  instinctively 
feel  in  doing  so  that  the  change  may  make  its  way  more  easily 
against  a* resistance  that  will  candidly  explain  itself;  and, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  social  judgment-process,  the  more 
fanatical  know  how  to  turn  to  good  advantage  for  their 
propaganda  the  bitterness  or  contempt  of  those  who  repre- 
sent the  established  order.  On  both  sides  there  are  those 
who  trust  more  in  mechanical  "pull  and  haul"  than  in  the 
intrinsic  merits  of  their  cause. 

Thus  it  is  by  encountering  some  rival  end  or  entire  sys- 
tem of  ends,  as  symbolized  by  an  ideal,  that  a  new  end 
emerging  out  of  impulse  comes  to  stand  for  an  agent,  as 
the  center  of  a  problem  of  conduct,  and  so  to  occupy  the 
center  of  attention.  And  it  thereby  becomes  an  Object,  as 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PKOCESS  241 

we  shall  hold,  which  must  be  more  fully  defined  in  order 
that  it  may  be  valued,  and  accordingly  be  held  to  warrant  a 
determinate  attitude  toward  itself  on  the  agent's  part.  We 
have  now  to  define  in  the  same  general  terms  the  typical 
economic  situation. 

In  economic  theory  as  in  common  thought  it  is  not  the 
contemplated  act  of  applying  certain  means  to  the  attain- 
ment of  an  end  regarded  as  desirable  that  functions  as  the 
logical  subject  of  valuation.  The  thing  or  object  valued  in 
the  economic  situation  is  one's  present  wealth,  whether 
material  or  immaterial,  one's  services  or  labor — whatever  one 
gives  in  exchange  or  otherwise  sets  apart  for  the  attainment 
of  a  desired  end  or,  proximately,  to  secure  possession  of  the 
necessary  and  sufficient  means  to  the  attainment  of  a  desired 
end.  The  object  of  attention  in  the  valuing  process  is  here 
not  itself  an  end  of  action.  In  this  respect  the  economic  type 
of  judgment  is  like  the  physical,  for  in  both  the  object  to  be 
valued  is  a  certain  means  which  one  is  seeking  to  adapt  to 
some  more  or  less  definitely  imaged  purpose ;  or  a  condition 
of  which  one  wishes,  likewise  for  some  special  purpose,  to 
take  advantage.  The  ultimate  goal  of  all  judgment  is  the 
determination  of  a  course  of  conduct  looking  toward  an 
end,  and  our  present  problem  may  accordingly  be  stated  in 
the  following  terms:  Under  what  circumstances  in  the 
judgment-process  does  it  become  necessary  to  the  defini- 
tion and  attainment  of  an  end  as  yet  vague  and  indeter- 
minate that  the  requisite  means,  as  in  part  already  physically 
determined,  should  be  further  scrutinized  in  attention  and 
determined  from  the  economic  point  of  view?  Or,  in  a 
word:  What  is  the  "jurisdiction"  of  the  economic  point  of 
view? 

For  ordinary  judgments  of  sense-perception  the  presence 
in  consciousness  of  a  single  unquestioned  end  is  the  adequate 
occasion,  as  our  analysis  (assuming  its  validity)  has  shown. 


242  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

For  ethical  judgment  we  have  seen  that  the  presence  of  con- 
flicting ends  is  necessary ;  and  we  shall  now  hold  that  this 
condition  is  necessary,  though  not,  without  a  certain  quali- 
fication, adequate,  for  the  economic  type  as  well.  If  an 
imaged  end  can  hold  its  place  in  consciousness  without  a 
rival,  and  the  physical  means  of  attaining  it  have  been  found 
and  co-ordinated,  then  the  use  or  consumption  of  the  means 
must  inevitably  follow,  without  either  ethical  or  economic 
judgment ;  for,  to  paraphrase  the  saying  of  Professor  James, 
nothing  but  an  end  can  displace  or  inhibit  effort  toward 
another  end.  The  economic  situation  differs,  then,  from  the 
ethical  in  this,  that  the  end  or  system  of  ends  entering  into 
competition  with  the  one  for  the  time  being  of  chief  and  pri- 
mary interest  has  been  brought  to  consciousness  through  ref- 
erence to  those  "physical"  means  which  already  have  been 
determined  as  necessary  to  this  latter  end.  The  conflict  of  ends 
in  the  economic  situation,  that  is  to  say,  is  not  due  to  a  direct 
and  intrinsic  incompatibility  between  them.  Where  there 
manifestly  is  such  incompatibility,  judgment  will  be  of  the 
ethical  type — as  when  building  the  house  involves  the  fore- 
closure of  a  mortgage,  and  so,  in  working  an  injury  to  the 
holder  of  the  site,  may  do  violence  to  one's  ideal  of  friend- 
ship or  ot  more  special  obligation;  or  when  an  impulse  to 
intemperate  self-indulgence  is  met  by  one's  ideal  of  social 
usefulness.  In  cases  such  as  these  one  clearly  sees,  or  can 
on  reflection  come  to  see,  in  what  way  an  evil  result  to  per- 
sonal character  will  follow  upon  the  imminent  misdeed,  and 
in  what  way  suppression  of  the  momentary  impulse  will  con- 
serve the  entire  approved  and  established  way  of  life.  Very 
often,  however,  the  conflicting  ends  are  related  in  no  such 
mutually  exclusive  way.  Each  may  be  in  itself  permissible 
and  compatible  with  the  other,  and,  so  far  as  any  possible 
ethical  discrimination  can  determine,  there  is  no  ground  for 
choice  between  them.  Thus  it  is  only  through  the  fact  that 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PEOCESS  243 

both  ends  are  dependent  upon  a  limited  supply  of  means 
that  one  would,  for  example,  ever  bring  together  and  deliber- 
ately oppose  in  judgment  the  purpose  of  making  additions 
to  his  library  and  the  necessity  of  providing  a  store  of  fuel 
for  the  winter.  Both  ends  in  such  a  case  are  in  themselves 
indeed  permissible  in  a  general  way,  but  they  may  very  well 
not  both  of  them  be  economically  possible,  and  hence,  for 
the  person  in  question  and  in  the  presence  of  the  economic 
conditions  which  confront  him,  not,  in  the  last  analysis,  both 
ethically  possible.  When  there  is  a  conflict  between  two 
ends  that  stand  in  close  organic  relation  in  the  sense 
explained  above,  the  problem  is  an  ethical  one ;  when  the  con- 
flict is,  in  the  sense  explained,  one  of  competition  between 
ends  ethically  permissible — not  at  variance,  either  one,  that 
is,  with  other  ends  directly — for  the  whole  or  for  a  share 
of  one's  supply  of  means,  the  problem  is  of  the  economic 
type.1 

There  are  three  typical  cases  in  which  economic  judg- 
ment or  valuation  of  the  means  is  necessary,  and  the  enu- 
meration of  these  will  make  clear  the  relation  between  the 

i  It  is  no  part  of  the  present  view  that  the  ends  which  enter  into  economic  conflict 
are  incapable  of  becoming  organic  and  intrinsically  interrelated  members  of  the 
provisional  system  of  life.  On  the  contrary,  the  very  essence  of  our  contention  is 
that  adjustment  established  between  two  such  conflicting  ends  in  economic  judgment 
is  in  itself  ethical  and  a  member  of  the  provisional  system  of  the  individual's  ends  of 
life,  and  will  stand  as  such,  subject  to  modification  through  changes  elsewhere  in 
the  system,  so  long  as  the  economic  conditions  in  view  of  which  it  was  determined 
remained  unchanged.  The  "  mutual  exclusiveness  "  of  the  ends  in  ethical  delibera- 
tion is  simply  the  correlate  of  a  relative  fixity  in  certain  of  the  conditions  of  life.  A 
man's  command  over  the  means  of  obtaining  such  things  as  books  and  fuel  varies 
much  and  often  suddenly  in  a  society  like  ours  from  time  to  time ;  but,  on  the  other 
hand,  his  physical  condition,  his  intelligence,  his  powers  of  sympathy,  and  his 
spiritual  capacity  for  social  service  commonly  do  not.  Hence  there  can  be  and  is  a 
certain  more  or  less  definite  and  permanent  comprehensive  scheme  of  conduct  mor- 
ally obligatory  upon  him  so  far  as  the  exercise  of  these  latter  faculties  is  concerned, 
but  so  far  as  his  conduct  depends  upon  the  variable  conditions  mentioned,  it  cannot 
be  prescribed  in  general  terms,  nor  will  any  provisional  ideal  of  moral  selfhood 
admit  any  such  prescriptions  as  integral  elements  into  itself.  The  moral  self  is  an 
ideal  construct  based  upon  these  fixed  conditions  of  life  — conditions  so  fixed  that 
the  spiritual  furtherance  or  deterioration  likely  to  result  from  certain  modes  of  con- 
duct involving  and  affecting  them  can  be  estimated  directly  and  with  relative  ease 
by  the  "ethical"  method  of  judgment.  Implied  in  such  a  construct  is,  of  course,  a 


244  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

ethical  and  the  economic  types  of  judgment:  (1)  First  may 
be  mentioned  the  case  in  which  ethical  deliberation  has 
apparently  reached  its  end  in  the  formation  of  apian  of  action 
which,  so  far  as  one  can  see,  on  ethical  grounds  is  unobjec- 
tionable. A  definite  "  temptation  "  may  have  been  overcome, 
or  out  of  a  more  complex  situation  a  satisfactory  ethical  com- 
promise or  readjustment  may  have  been  developed  with  much 
difficulty.  Now,  there  are  very  often  cases  in  which  such  a 
course  of  action  still  may  not  be  entered  on  without  further 
hesitation ;  for,  if  the  plan  be  one  requiring  for  its  working 
out  the  use  of  material  means,  the  fact  of  an  existing  limita- 
tion of  one's  supply  of  means  must  bring  hitherto unthought  of 
ends  into  conflict  witli  it.  There  are  doubtless  many  situa- 
tions in  which  one's  moral  choice  may  be  carried  into  prac- 
tice without  consideration  of  ways  and  means,  as  when  one 
forgives  an  injury  or  holds  his  instinctive  nature  under  dis- 
cipline in  the  effort  to  attain  an  ascetic  or  a  genuinely  social 
ideal  of  character.  But  more  often  than  the  moral  rigorist 
cares  to  see,  questions  of  an  economic  nature  must  be  raised 
after  the  ethical  " evidence  is  all  in" — questions  which  are 
probably  more  trying  to  a  sensitive  moral  nature  than  those 
more  dramatic  situations  in  which  the  real  perils  of  self- 
sophistication  are  vastly  less,  and  the  simpler,  sharper  defini- 

reference  to  certain  relatively  permanent  social  and  also  physical  conditions.  In  so 
far  as  society  and  physical  nature,  and  for  that  matter  the  individual's  own  nature, 
are  variable,  these  are  the  subjects  of  "scientific"  or  "factual"  judgments  inci- 
dental to  the  determination  of  problems  by  the  "economic"  method— problems, 
that  is,  for  which  no  general  answer,  through  reference  to  a  more  or  less  definite  and 
stable  working  concept  of  the  self,  can  be  given.  Thus  our  knowledge  of  the  physi- 
cal universe  is  largely,  if  not  chiefly,  incidental  to  and  conditioned  by  our  economic 
experience.  Again,  our  economic  judgments  are  in  every  case  determinative  of  the 
self  in  situations  in  which,  as  presented  by  (perhaps  even  momentarily)  variable  con- 
ditions, physical,  social,  or  personal,  the  ethical  method  is  inapplicable.  In  a  social- 
istic state,  in  which  economic  conditions  might  be  more  stable  than  in  our  present 
one,  many  problems  in  consumption  which  now  are  economic  in  one  sense  would  be 
ethical  because  admitting  of  solution  by  reference  to  the  type  of  self  presupposed 
in  the  established  state  program  of  production  and  distribution.  Even  now  it  is  not 
easy  to  specify  an  economic  situation  the  solution  of  which  is  absolutely  indifferent 
ethically.  There  is  a  possibility  of  intemperance  even  in  so  "aesthetic"  an  indul- 
gence as  Turkish  rugs. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  245 

tion  of  the  issue  makes  possible  a  less  difficult,  though  a  more 
decisive  and  edifying,  victory.  (2)  In  the  second  place  are 
those  cases  in  which  the  end  that  has  emerged  is  without 
conspicuous  moral  quality,  because,  although  it  may  represent 
some  worthy  impulse,  it  has  not  been  obliged  to  make  its 
way  to  acceptance  against  the  resistance  of  desires  less 
worthy  than  itself.  This  is  the  ideal  case  of  economic  theory 
in  which  "  moral  distinctions  are  irrelevant,"  and  the  eco- 
nomic man  is  free,  according  to  the  myth,  to  perform  his 
hedonistic  calculations  without  thought  of  moral  scruple.  The 
end  ethically  acceptable  in  itself,  like  the  enriching  of  one's 
library,  must,  when  the  means  are  limited,  divert  a  portion  of 
the  means  from  other  uses,  and  will  thus,  through  reference 
to  the  indispensable  means,  engage  in  conflict  with  other  ends 
quite  remotely,  if  in  the  agent's  knowledge  at  all,  related 
with  itself.  (3)  Finally  we  reach  the  limit  of  apparent  free- 
dom from  ethical  considerations  in  the  operations  of  business 
institutions,  and  perhaps  especially  in  those  of  large  business 
corporations.  Apart  from  the  routine  operations  of  a  business 
which  involve  no  present  exercise  of  the  valuing  judgment, 
there  are  constantly  in  such  institutions  new  projects  which 
must  be  considered,  and  which  commonly  must  involve 
revaluation  of  the  means.  In  this  revaluation  the  principle 
of  greatest  revenue  is  supposed  to  be  the  sole  criterion, 
regardless  of  other  personal  or  social  points  of  view  from 
which  confessedly  the  measure  might  be  considered.  But 
such  a  supposition,  however  true  to  the  facts  of  current 
business  practice  it  may  be,  we  must  hold  to  be  an  abstrac- 
tion when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the  social  life  at 
large,  and  hence  no  real  exception  to  our  general  principle. 
The  economic  and  the  ethical  situations  differ,  as  types,  only 
in  the  closeness  of  relation  between  the  ends  that  are  in  con- 
flict and  in  the  manner  in  which  the  ends  are  first  brought 
into  conflict  —  not  in  respect  of  the  intrinsic  nature  of  the 


246  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

ends  which  are  involved  in  them.1  It  is  this  difference  which, 
as  we  shall  see,  explains  why  ethical  valuation  must  be  of 
ends,  and  economic  valuation,  on  the  other  hand,  of  means. 

We  have  yet  to  see  in  what  way  valuation  of  the  means 
of  action  can  serve  to  resolve  a  difficulty  of  the  type  which 
has  thus  been  designated  as  Economic.  The  question  must  be 
deferred  until  a  more  detailed  analysis  of  the  economic  judg- 
ment-process can  be  undertaken.  It  is  enough  for  our  pres- 
ent purpose  to  note  that  the  subject  of  valuation  in  this 
process  is  the  means,  and  to  see  that  under  the  typical  con- 
ditions which  have  been  described  some  further  determina- 
tion of  the  means  than  the  merely  physical  one  of  their 
factual  availability  for  the  competing  ends  is  needed.2 
Physically  and  mechanically  the  means  are  available  for  each 
one  of  the  ends  or  groups  of  ends  in  question ;  the  pressing 
problem  is  to  determine  for  which  one  of  the  ends,  if  any, 
or  to  what  compromise  or  readjustment  of  certain  of  the 
ends  or  all  of  them,  the  means  at  hand  are  in  an  economic 
sense  most  properly  available.3 

1  Accordingly  there  can  be  no  distinction  of  ends,  some  as  ethical,  others  as  eco- 
nomic, but  from  an  ethical  standpoint  indifferent,  and  yet  others  as  amenable 
neither  to  ethical  nor  to  economic  judgment.    The  type  of  situation  and  the  corre- 
sponding mode  of  judgment  employed  determines  whether  an  end  shall  be  for  the 
time  being* ethical,  economic,  or  of  neither  sort  conspicuously. 

2  The  right  of  Prudence  to  rank  among  the  virtues  cannot,  on  our  present  view, 
be  questioned.    Economic  judgment,  though  it  must  be  valuation  of  means,  is  essen- 
tially choice  of  ends — and,  as  would  appear,  choice  of  a  sort  peculiarly  difficult  by 
reason  of  the  usually  slight  intrinsic  relation  between  the  ends  involved  and  also 
by  reason  of  the  absence  of  effective  points  of  view  for  comparison.    Culture,  as 
Emerson  remarks,  u  sees  prudence  not  to  be  a  several  faculty,  but  a  name  for  wis- 
dom and  virtue  conversing  with  the  body  and  its  wants."   And  again,  "  The  spurious 
prudence,  making  the  senses  final,  is  the  god  of  sots  and  cowards,  and  is  the  subject 

of  all  comedy [The  true  prudence]  takes  the  laws  of  the  world  whereby 

man's  being  is  conditioned,  as  they  are,  and  keeps  these  laws  that  it  may  enjoy  their 
proper  good  "  (Essay  on  Prudence). 

3  Here  again  we  purposely  use  inaccurate  language.    Strictly,  the  ends  here 
spoken  of  as  competing  are  such,  we  must  say,  only  because  they  are  as  yet  in  a 
measure  indeterminate,  wanting  in  "clearness,"  and  are  not  yet  understood  in  their 
true  economic  character;  likewise  the  means  are  wanting  in  that  final  shade  or 
degree  of  physical  and  mechanical  determinateness  which  they  are  presently  to 
possess  as  means  to  a  finally  determinate  economic  end.    Thus  economic  judgment, 
by  which  is  to  be  understood  determination  of  an  end  of  action  by  the  economic 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  247 

From  this  preliminary  discussion  of  the  ethical  and  eco- 
nomic situations  we  must  now  pass  to  discuss  the  objectivity 
of  the  judgments  by  which  the  agent  meets  the  difficulties 
which  such  situations  as  these  present.  We  shall  seek  to 
show  that  these  judgments  are  constructive  of  an  objective 
order  of  reality.  It  will  be  necessary  in  the  first  place  to 
determine  the  psychological  conditions  of  the  more  commonly 
recognized  experience  of  Objectivity  in  the  restricted  sphere 
of  sense-perception.  There  might  otherwise  remain  a  certain 
antecedent  presumption  against  the  thesis  which  we  wish  to 
establish  even  after  the  direct  argument  had  been  presented.1 

Ill 

Common-sense  and  natural  science  certainly  tend  to  iden- 
tify the  objectively  real  with  the  existent  in  space  and  time. 
The  physical  universe  is  held  to  be  palpably  real  in  a  way 
in  which  nothing  not  presented  in  sensuous  terms  can  be. 
To  most  minds  doubtless  it  is  difficult  to  understand  why 
Plato  should  have  ascribed  to  the  Ideas  a  higher  degree  of 
reality  than  that  possessed  by  the  particular  objects  of  sense- 
perception,  and  still  more  difficult  to  understand  his  ascrip- 
tion of  real  existence  to  such  Ideas  as  those  of  Beauty, 
Justice,  and  the  Good.  There  is  a  certain  apparent  stability 
in  a  universe  presented  in  "immediate"  sense-perception — 
a  universe  with  which  we  are  in  constant  bodily  intercourse 

method  and  in  accordance  with  economic  principles,  involves  in  general  physical 
re-determination  of  the  means.  The  means  which  at  the  outset  of  the  present  eco- 
nomic judgment-process  appear  as  physically  available  indifferently  for  either  of  the 
tentative  ends  under  consideration  are  only  in  a  general  way  the  same  means  for 
knowledge  as  they  will  be  when  the  economic  problem  has  been  solved.  They  are, 
so  far  as  now  determinate,  the  outcome  of  former  physical  judgment-processes  inci- 
dental to  the  definition  of  economic  ends  in  former  situations  like  the  present. 

1  In  our  discussion  of  this  preliminary  question  there  is  no  attempt  to  furnish 
what  might  be  called  an  analysis  of  the  consciousness  of  objectivity.  This  has  been 
undertaken  by  various  psychologists  in  recent  Well-known  contributions  to  the  sub- 
ject. For  our  purpose  it  is  necessary  only  to  specify  the  intellectual  and  practical 
attitude  out  of  which  the  consciousness  of  objectivity  arises ;  not  the  sensory  "  ele- 
ments" or  factors  involved  in  its  production  as  an  experience. 


248  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

— that  seems  not  to  belong  to  a  mere  order  of  relations 
which,  if  known  in  any  sense,  is  not  known  to  us  through 
the  senses.  Moreover,  knowledge  of  the  physical  world  is 
felt  to  possess  a  higher  degree  of  certainty  than  does  any 
knowledge  we  can  have  of  supposed  economic  or  moral  truth, 
or  of  economic  or  moral  standards.  Of  such  knowledge  one 
is  disposed  to  say,  as  Mr.  Spencer  does  of  metaphysics,  that 
at  the  best  it  presupposes  a  long  and  elaborate  inferential 
process  which,  as  long,  is  likely  to  be  faulty ;  whereas  physi- 
cal truth  is  immediate  or  else,  when  inference  is  involved  in 
it,  easy  to  be  tested  by  appeal  to  immediate  facts.  Physi- 
cal reality  is  a  reality  that  can  be  seen  and  handled  and  felt 
as  offering  resistance,. and  this  is  evidence  of  objectivity  of  a 
sort  not  to  be  found  in  other  spheres  of  knowledge  for  which 
the  like  claim  is  made. 

The  force  of  these  impressions  (and  it  would  not  be  diffi- 
cult to  find  stronger  statements  in  the  history  of  scientific 
and  ethical  nominalism)  diminishes  if  one  tries  to  determine 
in  what  consists  that  objectivity  which  they  uncritically 
assume  as  given  in  sense-perception.  For  one  must  recog- 
nize that  not  all  our  possible  modes  of  sense-experience  are 
equally  concerned  in  the  presentation  of  this  perceived 
objective  world.  Certain  sensory  "quales"  are  immediately 
referred  to  outward  objects  as  belonging  to  them.  Certain 
others  are,  in  a  way,  "inward,"  either  not  more  definitely  local- 
ized at  all  or  merely  localized  in  the  sense-organ  which 
mediates  them.  Now,  the  reason  for  this  difference  cannot 
lie  in  the  content  of  the  various  sense-qualities  abstractly 
taken.  A  visual  sensation,  apart  from  the  setting  in  which 
it  occurs  in  common  experience,  can  be  no  more  objective  in 
its  reference — indeed,  can  have  no  more  reference  of  any 
kind — than  the  least  definite  and  instructive  organic  sensa- 
tion. For  the  degree  of  distinctness  with  which  one  dis- 
criminates sense-qualities  depends  upon  the  number  and 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  249 

importance  of  the  interpretative  associations  which  it  is 
important  from  time  to  time  to  "connect"  with  them;  or,  con- 
versely, the  sense-qualities  are  not  seZ/-discriminating  in 
virtue  of  an  intrinsic  objective  reference  or  meaning  which 
each  possesses  and  which  drives  it  apart  from  all  the  rest. 
Indeed,  an  intrinsic  meaning,  if  a  sensation  could  possess 
one,  would  not  only  be  superfluous  in  the  development  of 
knowledge,  but,  as  likely  to  be  mistaken  for  the  acquired  or 
functional  meaning,  even  seriously  confusing.1 

Now,  it  must  be  granted  that,  if  the  "simple  idea  of  sen- 
sation" is  without  objective  reference,  no  association  with 
it  of  similarly  abstract  sensations  can  supply  the  lack.  A 
"movement"  sensation,  or  a  tactual,  having  in  itself  no  such 
meaning,  cannot  merely  by  being  "  associated  "  with  a  simi- 
larly meaningless  visual  sensation  endow  this  latter  with 
reference  to  an  object.  Objective  reference  is,  in  fact,  not  a 
sensuous  thing  ;  it  is  not  a  conscious  "element,"  nor  does  it 
arise  from  any  combination  or  fusion  of  such.  It  is  neither 
in  the  association  of  ideas  as  a  constituent  member,  nor  does 
it  belong  to  the  association  considered  as  a  sequence  of 
psychical  states.  Instead,  in  our  present  view,  it  belongs  to  or 
arises  out  of  the  activity  through  which  and  with  reference 

i  So,  on  the  other  hand,  our  vague  organic  sensations  are  possibly  more  instruct- 
ive as  they  are,  for  their  own  purpose,  than  they  would  be  if  more  sharply  dis- 
criminated and  complexly  referred. 

For  convenience  we  here  meet  the  view  under  consideration  with  its  own  termi- 
nology ;  we  by  no  means  wish  to  be  understood  as  indorsing  this  terminology  as  psy- 
chologically correct.  The  sense-quality  of  which  we  read  in  "  structural  psychology  " 
is,  we  hold,  not  a  structural  unit  at  all,  but  in  fact  a  highly  abstract  development  out 
of  that  unorganized  whole  of  sensory  experience  in  which  reflective  attention  begins. 
There  is,  for  example,  no  such  thing  as  the  simple  unanalyzable  sense-quality  "  red  " 
in  consciousness  until  judgment  has  proceeded  far  enough  to  have  constructed  a 
definite  and  measured  experience  which  may  be  symbolized  as  "  object-before-me- 
possessing-the-attribute-red."  In  place  of  the  original  sensory  total-experience  we 
now  have  a  more  or  less  developed  perceptual  (i.  e.,  judgmental)  total-experience. 
It  is  an  instance  of  the  "  psychological  fallacy"  to  interpret  what  are  really  elements 
of  meaning  in  a  perceived  object  constructed  in  judgment  (for  this  is  the  true  nature 
of  the  "  simple  idea  of  sensation  "  or  "  sense-element ")  as  so  many  bits  of  psychical 
material  which  were  isolated  from  each  other  at  the  outset,  and  have  been  externally 
joined  together  in  their  present  combination. 


250  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

to  which  associations  are  first  of  all  established.  It  is  an 
aspect  or  kind  of  reference  or  category  under  which  any 
sense-quality  or  datum  is  apperceived  when  it  is  held  apart 
from  the  stream  of  consciousness  in  order  that  it  may  receive 
new  meaning  as  a  stimulus  ;  and  a  sensation  functioning  in 
such  a  "state  of  consciousness"1  is  a  psychical  phenomenon 
very  different  from  the  conscious  element  of  "analytical" 
psychology.  The  extent  to  which  it  is  true  that  the  objec- 
tive world  of  sense-perception  is  pre-eminently  visual  and 
tactual  is  then  merely  an  evidence  of  the  extent  to  which 
the  exigencies  of  the  life-process  have  required  finer  sense- 
discrimination  for  the  sake  of  more  refined  reaction  within 
these  spheres  as  compared  with  others.  Our  conclusion, 
then,  must  be  that  the  consciousness  of  objectivity  is  not 
as  such  sensuous,  even  as  given  in  our  perception  of  the 
material  world.  The  world,  as  viewed  from  the  standpoint 
of  a  particular,  practical  emergency,  is  an  objective  world, 
not  in  virtue  of  its  having  a  "sensuous"  or  a  "material" 
aspect  as  something  existent  per  se,  but  because  it  is  a 
world  of  stimuli  in  course  of  definition  for  the  guidance  of 
activity.2 

It  will  be  well  to  give  further  positive  exposition  of  the 
meaning  *of  the  view  thus  stated.     To  return  once  more  to 

1  The  phrase  is  Kfllpe's  and  is  used  in  his  sense  of  consciousness  taken  as  a  whole, 
as,  for  example,  attentive,  apperceptive,  volitional,  rather  than  in  the  sense  made 
familiar  by  Spencer  and  others. 

2  The  foregoing  discussion  is  in  many  ways  similar  to  Brentano's  upon  the  same 
subject.    In  discussing  his  first  class  of  modes  of  consciousness,  the  Vorstellungen, 
he  says :    "  We  find  no  contrasts  between  presentations  excepting  those  of  the  objects 
to  which  the  presentations  refer.    Only  in  so  far  as  warm  and  cold,  light  and  dark, 
a  high  note  and  a  low,  form  contrasts  can  we  speak  of  the  corresponding  presenta- 
tions as  contrasted ;  and,  in  general,  there  is  in  any  other  sense  than  this  no  contrast 
within  the  entire  range  of  these  conscious  processes"    (Psychologic  vom   empi- 
rischen  Standpurikte,  Bd.  I,  p.  29) .    This  may  stand  as  against  any  attempt  to  find 
contrast  between  abstract  sense-qualities  taken  apart  from  their  objective  reference. 
What  is,  however,  the  ground  of  distinction  between  the  presented  objects?    Appar- 
ently this  must  be  answered  in  the  last  resort  as  above.    In  this  sense  we  should  need 
finally  to  interpret  "sensuous"  and  "material"  in  terms  of  objectivity  as  above 
defined,  rather  than  the  reverse.    They  are  cases  in  or  specifications  of  the  deter- 
mination of  adequate  stimuli. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  251 

our  fundamental  psychological  conception,  knowledge  is 
essentially  relevant  to  the  solution  of  particular  problems  of 
more  or  less  urgency  and  of  various  kinds  and  figures  in  the 
solution  of  such  problems  as  the  assemblage  of  consciously 
recognized  symbols  or  stimuli  by  which  various  actions  are 
suggested.  The  object  as  known  is  therefore  not  the  same 
as  the  object  as  apprehended  in  other  possible  modes  of  being 
conscious  of  it.  The  workman  who  is  actually  using  his 
tool  in  shaping  his  material,  or  the  warrior  who  is  actually 
using  his  weapon  in  the  thick  of  combat,  is,  if  conscious  of 
these  objects  at  all  (and  doubtless  he  may  be  conscious  of 
them  at  such  times),  not  conscious  of  them  as  objects — as 
the  one  might  be,  for  example,  in  adjusting  the  tool  for  a 
particular  kind  of  use,  and  the  other  in  giving  a  keen  edge 
to  his  blade.  Under  these  latter  circumstances  the  tool  or 
weapon  is  an  object,  and  its  observed  condition,  viewed  in 
the  light  of  a  purpose  of  using  the  object  in  a  certain  way, 
is  regarded  as  properly  suggesting  certain  changes  or 
improvements.  And  likewise  will  the  tool  or  the  weapon 
have  an  objective  character  in  the  agent's  apprehension  in 
the  moment  of  identifying  and  selecting  it  from  among  a 
number  of  others,  or  even  in  the  act  of  reaching  for  it,  espe- 
cially if  it  is  inconveniently  placed.  But  in  the  act  of  freely 
using  one's  objective  means  the  category  of  the  objective 
plays  no  part  in  consciousness,  because  at  such  times  there 
is  no  judgment  respecting  the  means — because  there  is  no 
sufficient  occasion  for  the  isolation  of  certain  conscious  ele- 
ments from  the  rest  of  the  stream  of  conscious  experience 
to  be  denned  as  stimuli  to  certain  needed  responses.  Such 
isolation  will  not  normally  take  place  so  long  as  the  reac- 
tions suggested  by  the  conscious  contents  involved  in  the 
experience  are  fully  adequate  to  the  situation.  Objects  are 
not  normally  held  apart  as  such  from  the  stream  of  conscious- 
ness in  which  they  are  presented  and  recognized  as  possess- 


252  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

ing  qualities  warranting  certain  modes  of  conduct,  except- 
ing as  it  has  become  necessary  to  the  attainment  of  the 
agent's  purposes  to  modify  or  reconstruct  his  activity.1 

Are  things,  then,  apprehended  as  objective  in  virtue  of 
the  agent's  attitude  toward  them,  or  is  the  agent's  attitude 
in  a  typical  case  grounded  upon  an  antecedent  determination 
of  the  objectivity  of  the  things  in  question?  We  must 
answer,  in  the  first  place,  that  there  can  be  no  such  antece- 
dent determination.  We  may,  it  is  true,  speak  of  believing, 
on  the  evidence  of  sight  or  touch,  that  a  certain  object  is 
really  present  before  us.  But  neither  sight  nor  touch  pos- 
sesses in  itself,  as  a  particular  sense- quality,  any  objective 
meaning.  If  touch  is  par  excellence  the  sense  of  the  objec- 
tive and  the  appeal  to  touch  the  test  of  objectivity,  this  can 
only  be  because  touch  is  the  sense  most  closely  and  intimately 
connected  in  our  experience  with  action.  After  any  interval 
of  hesitation  and  judgment,  action  begins  with  contact  with 
and  manipulation  of  the  physical  means  which  have  been 
under  investigation.  Not  only  is  touch  the  proximate  stimu- 
lus and  guide  to  manipulation,  but  all  relevant  knowledge 
which  has  been  gained  in  any  judgment-process,  through  the 
other  senses,  and  especially  through  sight,  must  ultimately 
be  reducible  to  terms  of  touch  or  other  contact  sense.  The 
alleged  tactual  evidence  of  objectivity  is,  then,  rather  a  con- 
firmation than  a  difficulty  for  our  present  view.  In  short, 
we  must  dismiss  as  impossible  the  hypothesis  that  there  can 
be  a  consciousness  of  objectivity  which  is  not  dependent 
upon  and  an  expression  of  primary  antecedent  tendencies 
toward  motor  response  to  the  presented  stimulus.  It  is  our 
attitude  toward  the  prospective  stimulus  that  mediates  the 
consciousness  of  an  object  standing  over  against  us. 

So  far,  indeed,  is  it  from  being  true  that  objectivity  is  a 

1  In  this  connection  reference  may  be  made  to  the  well-known  disturbing  effect 
of  the  forced  introduction  of  attention  to  details  into  established  sensori-motor 
co-ordinations,  such  as  u  typewriting,"  playing  upon  the  piano,  and  the  like. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  253 

matter  for  special  determination  antecedently  to  action  that 
by  common  testimony  the  conviction  of  objectivity  comes  to 
us  quite  irresistibly.  The  object  forces  itself  upon  us,  as  we 
say,  and  "  whether  we  will  or  no"  we  must  recognize  its 
presence  there  before  us  and  its  independence  of  any  choice 
of  ours  or  of  our  knowledge.  In  the  cautious  manipulation 
of  an  instrument,  in  the  laborious  shaping  of  some  refrac- 
tory material,  in  the  performance  of  any  delicate  or  difficult 
task,  one's  sense  of  the  objectivity  of  the  thing  with  which 
one  works  is  as  obtrusive  as  remorse  or  grief,  and  as  little  to 
be  shaken  off.  We  shall  revert  to  this  suggested  analogy  at 
a  later  stage  in  our  discussion. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  define  more  precisely  the 
nature  of  the  conditions  in  which  the  sense  of  objectivity 
emerges,  and  this  will  bring  us  to  the  point  at  which  the 
objective  import  of  our  economic  and  ethical  judgments  can 
profitably  be  discussed.  We  have  said  that  the  world  of 
the  physical  is  objective,  not  in  virtue  of  the  sensuous  t§rms 
in  which  it  is  presented,  but  because  it  is  a  world  of  stimuli 
for  the  guidance  of  human  conduct.  Under  what  circum- 
stances, then,  are  we  conscious  of  stimuli  in  their  capacity 
of  guides  or  incentives  or  grounds  of  conduct  ?  And  the 
answer  must  be  that  stimuli  are  interpreted  as  such,  and  so 
take  on  the  character  of  objectivity,  when  their  precise  char- 
acter as  stimuli  is  still  in  doubt,  and  they  must  therefore 
receive  further  definition. 

For  example,  a  man  pursued  by  a  wild  beast  must  find 
some  means  of  escape  or  defense,  and,  seeing  a  tree  which 
he  may  climb  or  a  stone  which  he  may  hurl,  will  inspect 
these  as  well  as  may  be  with  reference  to  their  fitness  for  the 
intended  purpose.  It  is  at  just  such  moments  as  these, 
then,  that  physical  things  become  things  for  knowledge  and 
take  on  their  stubbornly  objective  character — that  is  to  say, 
when  they  are  essentially  problematic.  Now,  in  order  that 


254  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

any  physical  thing  may  be  thus  problematic  and  so  possess 
objective  character  for  knowledge,  it  must  (1)  be  in  part 
understood,  and  so  prompt  certain  more  or  less  indiscrimi- 
nate responses;  and  (2)  be  in  part  as  yet  not  understood — 
in  such  wise  that,  while  there  are  certain  indefinite  or 
unmeasured  tendencies  on  the  agent's  part  to  respond  to  the 
object — climb  the  tree  or  hurl  the  stone — there  is  also  a 
certain  failure  of  complete  unity  in  the  co-ordination  of 
these  activities,  a  certain  contradiction  between  different 
suggestions  of  conduct  which  different  observed  qualities  of 
the  tree  or  stone  may  give,  and  so  hesitation  and  arrest  of 
final  action.  The  pursued  man  views  the  tree  suspiciously 
before  trusting  himself  to  its  doubtful  strength,  or  weighs 
well  the  stone  and  tests  its  rough  edges  before  pausing  to 
throw  it.  Thus,  to  state  the  matter  negatively,  there  are 
two  possible  situations  in  which  the  sense  of  objectivity,  if 
it  emerge  into  consciousness  at  all,  cannot  long  continue. 
An  object  —  as,  for  example,  some  strange  shrub  or  flower — 
which,  in  the  case  we  are  supposing,  may  attract  the  pur- 
sued wayfarer's  notice,  may  awaken  no  responses  relevant 
to  the  emergency  in  which  the  agent  finds  himself;  and  it 
will  therefore  forthwith  lapse  from  consciousness.  Or,  on 
the  other  band,  the  object,  as  the  tree  or  stone,  may  rightly 
or  wrongly  seem  to  the  agent  so  completely  satisfactory,  or, 
rather,  in  effect  may  be  so,  as  instantly  to  prompt  the  action 
which  otherwise  would  come,  if  at  all,  only  after  a  period  of 
more  or  less  prolonged  attention.  In  neither  of  these  cases, 
then,  is  there  a  problematic  object.  In  the  one  the  thing  in 
question  is  wholly  apart  from  any  present  interest,  and 
therefore  lapses.  In  the  other  case  the  thing  seen  is  com- 
prehended on  the  instant  with  reference  to  its  general  use 
and  merges  immediately  into  the  main  stream  of  the  agent's 
consciousness  without  having  been  an  object  of  express 
attention.  In  neither  case,  therefore,  is  there  hesitation 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  255 

with  reference  to  the  thing  in  question — any  conflict 
between  inconsiderate  positive  responses  prompted  by  cer- 
tain features  of  the  object  and  inhibitions  due  to  recognition 
of  its  shortcomings.  In  a  word,  in  neither  case  is  there  any 
judgment  or  possibility  of  judgment,  and  hence  no  sense  of 
objectivity.  We  can  have  consciousness  of  an  object,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  term,  only  when  some  part  or  general 
aspect  of  the  total  situation  confronting  an  agent  excites  or 
seems  to  warrant  responses  which  must  be  held  in  check  for 
further  determination.  In  terms  of  consciousness,  an  object 
is  always  an  object  of  attention — that  is,  an  object  which  is 
under  process  of  development  and  reconstruction  with  refer- 
ence to  an  end. 

An  "inhibited  impulse  to  react  in  a  more  or  less  definite 
way  to  a  stimulus  is,  then,  the  adequate  condition  of  the 
emergence  in  consciousness  of  the  sense  of  objectivity.  So 
long  as  an  activity  is  proceeding  without  check  or  interrup- 
tion, and  no  conflict  develops  between  motor  responses 
prompted  by  different  parts  or  aspects  of  the  situation,  the 
agent's  consciousness  will  not  present  the  distinction  of 
Objective  and  Subjective.  The  mode  of  being  conscious 
which  accompanies  free  and  harmonious  activity  of  this  sort 
may  be  exemplified  by  such  experiences  as  aBsthetic  apprecia- 
tion, sensuous  enjoyment,  acquiescent  absorption  in  pleasur- 
able emotion,  or  even  intellectual  processes  of  the  mechanical 
sort,  such  as  easy  computation  or  the  solution  of  simple  alge- 
braic problems — processes  in  which  no  more  serious  diffi- 
culty is  encountered  than  suffices  to  stimulate  a  moderate 
degree  of  interest.  If,  however,  reverting  to  the  illustration, 
our  present  need  for  a  stone  calls  for  some  property  which 
the  stone  we  have  seized  appears  to  lack,  consciousness  must 
pass  over  into  the  reflective  or  attentive  phase.  The  stone 
will  now  figure  as  an  object  possessing  certain  qualities  which 
render  it  in  a  general  way  relevant  to  the  emergency  before 


256  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

us.  A  needed  quality  is  missing,  and  this  defect  must  hold 
in  check  all  the  imminent  responses  until  discovery  of  the 
missing  quality  can  set  them  free.  In  a  word,  the  stone  as 
known  to  us  has  assumed  the  station  of  subject  in  a  judgment- 
process,  and  our  effort  is,  if  possible,  to  assign  to  it  a  new 
predicate  relevant  to  our  present  situation.  Psychologically 
speaking,  the  stone  is  an  object,  a  stimulus  to  which  we  are 
endeavoring  to  find  warrant  for  responding  in  some  new  or 
reconstructed  way. 

In  this  process  we  must  assume,  then,  first  of  all,  an 
interest  on  the  agent's  part  in  the  situation  as  a  whole, 
which  in  the  first  place,  in  terms  of  the  illustration,  makes 
the  pursued  one  note  the  tree  or  stone — which  might 
otherwise  have  escaped  his  notice  as  completely  as  any 
passing  cloud  or  falling  leaf  —  and  suggests  what  particu- 
lar qualities  or  adaptabilities  should  be  looked  for  in  it. 
Given  this  interest  in  "making  something"  out  of  the  total 
situation  as  explaining  the  recognition  of  the  stone  and 
the  impulse  to  seize  and  hurl  it,  we  find  the  sense  of  the 
stone's  objectivity  emerging  just  in  the  arrest  of  the  undis- 
criminating  impulse.  The  stone  must  have  a  certain  mean- 
ing as  a  stimulus  first  of  all,  but  it  must  be  a  meaning  not 
yet  quite  defined  and  certain  of  acceptance.  The  stone  will 
be  an  object  only  if,  and  so  long  as,  the  undiscriminating 
impulses  suggested  by  these  elements  of  meaning  are  held 
in  check  in  order  that  they  may  be  ordered,  supplemented, 
or  made  more  definite.  It  is,  then,  the  essence  of  the  pres- 
ent contention  that  physical  things  are  objective  in  our 
experience  in  virtue  of  their  recognized  inadequacy  as 
means  or  incentives  of  action  —  an  inadequacy  which,  in 
turn,  is  felt  as  such  in  so  far  as  we  are  seeking  to  use  them 
as  means  or  grounds  of  conduct,  or  to  avail  ourselves  of 
them  as  conditions,  in  coping  with  the  general  situation 
from  which  our  attention  has  abstracted  them. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  257 

From  this  analysis  of  the  conditions  of  the  consciousness 
of  objectivity  we  must  now  proceed  to  inquire  whether  in  the 
typical  ethical  and  economic  situations,  as  they  have  been 
described,  essentially  these  same  conditions  are  present. 

In  the  ethical  situation,  according  to  our  statement,  the 
subject  of  the  judgment  (the  object  of  attention)  is  the  new 
end  which  has  just  been  presented  in  imagination,  and  we 
have  now  to  see  that  the  agent's  attitude  toward  this  end  is 
for  our  present  purpose  essentially  the  same  as  toward  a 
physical  object  which  is  under  scrutiny.  For  just  as  the 
physical  object  is  such  for  consciousness  because  it  is  partly 
relevant  (whether  in  the  way  of  furthering  or  of  hindering) 
to  the  agent's  purpose,  but  as  yet  partly  not  understood 
from  this  point  of  view,  so  the  imaged  end  may  likewise  be 
ambiguous.  The  agent's  moral  purpose  may  be  the  (very 
likely  mythical)  primitive  one  of  which  we  read  in  "associa- 
tional"  discussions  of  the  moral  consciousness — that  of  avoid- 
ing punishment.  It  may  be  that  of  "  imitative,"  sympathetic 
obedience  to  authority — a  sentiment  whose  fundamental 
importance  for  ethical  psychology  has  long  remained  with- 
out due  recognition.1  It  may  be  loyalty  to  an  ideal  of 
conscience,  or  yet  again  a  purpose  of  enlargement  and 
development  of  personality.  But  on  either  supposition  the 
compatibility  of  the  end  with  the  prevailing  standard  or 
principle  of  decision  may  be  a  matter  of  doubt  and  so  call  for 
judgment.  The  problem  will,  of  course,  be  a  problem  in  the 
full  logical  sense  as  involving  judgment  of  the  type  described 
in  our  discussion  of  the  ethical  situation  only  when  the  atti- 
tudes of  obedience  to  authority  and  to  fixed  ideals  have  been 
outgrown ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  as  might  be  shown,  it  is 
just  the  inevitable  increasing  use  of  judgment  with  refer- 
ence to  these  formulations  of  the  moral  life  which  gradually 

1C/.  PROFESSOR  BALDWIN'S  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  and  PROFESSOR 
McGir,  VARY'S  recent  paper  on  "  Moral  Obligation,"  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XI, 
especially  pp.  349  f . 


258  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

undermines  them  and,  by  a  kind  of  "internal  dialectic"  of 
the  moral  consciousness,  brings  the  agent  to  recognition  as 
well  as  to  more  perfect  practice  of  a  logical  or  deliberative 
method. 

The  end,  then,  is,  in  the  typical  ethical  situation,  an 
object  which  one  must  determine  by  analysis  and  reconstruc- 
tion as  a  means  or  condition  of  moral  "integrity"  and  prog- 
ress. It  is,  accordingly,  in  the  second  place,  an  object 
upon  whose  determination  a  definite  activity  of  the  agent  is 
regarded  by  him  as  depending.  Just  as  in  the  physical 
judgment-process  the  object  is  set  off  over  against  the  self 
and  regarded  as  a  given  thing  which,  when  once  completely 
defined,  will  prompt  certain  movements  of  the  body,  so  here 
the  contemplated  act  is  an  object  which,  when  fully  defined 
in  all  its  relevant  psychological  and  sociological  bearings, 
will  prompt  a  definite  act  of  rejection  or  acceptance  by  the 
self.  Now,  it  might  be  shown,  as  we  believe,  that  the  com- 
plete psychological  and  sociological  definition  of  the  course 
of  conduct  is  in  truth  the  full  explanation  of  the  choice; 
there  is  no  separate  reaction  of  the  moral  self  to  which  the 
course  of  conduct  is,  as  defined,  an  external  stimulus.  So 
also  in  the  sphere  of  physical  judgment  complete  definition 
passes  over  into  action — or  the  appreciative  mode  of  con- 
sciousness which  accompanies  action — without  breach  of 
continuity.  But  within  the  judgment-process  in  all  its  forms 
there  is  in  the  agent's  apprehension  this  characteristic  fea- 
ture of  apparent  separation  between  the  subject  as  an  objec- 
tive thing  presently  to  be  known  and  used  or  responded  to, 
and  the  predicate  as  a  response  yet  to  be  perfected  in  details, 
but  at  the  right  time,  when  one  has  proper  warrant,  to  be  set 
free.  It  is  not  our  purpose  here  to  speak  of  metaphysical 
interpretations  or  misinterpretations  of  this  functional  dis- 
tinction ;  but  only  to  argue  from  the  presence  of  the  distinc- 
tion in  the  ethical  type  of  judgment  as  in  the  physical  as 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  259 

genuine  an  objectivity  for  the  ethical  type  as  can  be  ascribed 
to  the  other.  The  ethical  judgment  is  objective  in  the  sense 
that  in  it  an  object — an  imaged  mode  of  conduct  taken  as 
such — is  presented  for  development  to  a  degree  of  adequacy 
at  which  one  can  accept  it  or  reject  it  as  a  mode  of  conduct. 
The  ethical  predicates  Right  and  Wrong,  Good  and  Bad, 
each  pair  representing  a  particular  standpoint,  as  we  shall 
later  see,  signify  this  accepting  or  rejecting  movement  of 
the  self,  this  "act  of  will,"  of  which,  as  an  act  in  due  time 
to  be  performed,  the  agent  is  more  or  less  acutely  conscious 
in  the  course  of  moral  judgment. 

In  the  economic  situation  also,  as  above  described,  there 
is  present  the  requisite  condition  of  the  consciousness  of 
objectivity.  Here,  as  in  the  ethical  situation,  an  object  is 
presented  which  one  must  redetermine,  and  toward  which 
one  must  presently  act  in  a  way  likewise  to  be  determined  in 
detail  in  judgment.  We  shall  defer  until  a  later  stage  dis- 
cussion of  the  reason  why  this  subject  of  the  economic  judg- 
ment is  the  means  in  the  activity  that  is  in  progress.  We 
are  not  yet  ready  to  show  that  the  means  must  be  the  center 
of  attention  under  the  conditions  which  have  been  specified. 
Here  we  need  only  note  the  fact  of  common  experience  that 
economic  judgment  does  center  upon  the  means,  and  show 
that  in  this  fact  is  given  the  objective  status  of  the  means  in 
the  judgment-process ;  for  the  economic  problem  is  essentially 
that  of  withdrawing  a  portion,  a  "  marginal  increment,"  of 
the  means  from  some  use  or  set  of  uses  to  which  they  are  at 
present  set  apart,  and  applying  it  to  the  new  end  that  has 
come  to  seem,  on  ethical  grounds  at  least,  desirable ;  and  we 
may  regard  this  diversion  as  the  essentially  economic  act 
which,  in  the  agent's  apprehension  during  judgment,  is  con- 
tingent upon  the  determination  of  the  means.  The  object 
as  economic  is  accordingly  the  means,  or  a  marginal  portion 
of  the  means,  which  is  to  be  thus  diverted  (or,  so  to  speak, 


260  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

exposed  to  the  likelihood  of  such  diversion),  and  its  deter- 
mination must  be  of  such  a  nature  as  to  show  the  economic 
urgency,  or  at  least  the  permissibility,  of  this  diversion. 
Into  this  determination,  manifestly,  the  results  of  much 
auxiliary  inquiry  into  physical  properties  of  the  means  must 
enter — such  properties,  for  example,  as  have  to  do  with  its 
technological  fitness  for  its  present  use  as  compared  with  pos- 
sible substitutes,  and  its  adaptability  for  the  new  use  pro- 
posed. Taking  the  word  in  the  broad  sense  of  object  of 
thought,  it  is  always  an  object  in  space  and  time  to  which 
the  economic  judgment  assigns  an  economic  value ;  and  it  is 
true  here  (just  the  same  is  true,  mutatis  mutandis,  of  the 
psychological  and  sociological  determinations  necessary  to 
the  fixation  of  ethical  value)  that  the  economically  motivated 
physical  determination  of  the  objective  means  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  emergency  in  hand  is  the  full  " causal" 
explanation  of  the  economic  act.  It  must,  however,  be  care- 
fully observed  that  this  physical  determination  is  in  the 
typical  case  altogether  incidental,  from  the  agent's  stand- 
point, to  the  assignment  of  an  economic  character  or  value 
to  the  means — a  value  which  will  at  the  close  of  the  judg- 
ment come  to  conscious  recognition.  As  we  shall  see,  the 
process  is  directed  throughout  by  reference  to  economic  prin- 
ciples and  standards,  and  what  shall  be  an  adequate  deter- 
mination in  the  case  depends  upon  the  precision  with  which 
these  are  formulated  and  the  strenuousness  with  which  they 
are  applied.  In  a  word,  the  economic  judgment  assigns  to 
the  physical  object,  as  known  at  the  outset,  a  new  non- 
physical  character.  Throughout  the  judgment-process  this 
character  is  gaining  in  distinctness,  and  at  the  end  it  is 
accepted  as  the  Value  of  the  means,  as  warrant  for  the 
diversion  of  them  to  the  new  use  which  has  been  decided  on.1 

1  Manifestly,  as  indicated  just  above,  this  accepted  value  of  the  object  implies 
fuller  physical  knowledge  of  the  object  than  was  possessed  at  the  outset  of  the  eco- 
nomic judgment.  See  above,  p.  234,  note ;  p.  246,  note  3 ;  and  p,  271,  below. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  261 

We  have  now  to  consider  whether  in  the  actual  ethical 
and  economic  experience  of  men  there  is  any  direct  evidence 
confirming  the  conclusions  which  our  logical  analysis  of  the 
respective  situations  would  appear  to  require.  Can  any 
phases  of  the  total  experience  of  working  out  a  satisfactory 
course  of  conduct  in  these  typical  emergencies  be  appealed 
to  as  actually  showing  at  least  some  tacit  recognition  that 
these  types  of  judgment  present  each  one  an  order  of  reality 
or  an  aspect  of  the  one  reality? 

In  the  first  place,  then,  one  must  recognize  that  in  the 
agent's  own  apprehension  a  judgment  of  value  has  some- 
thing more  than  a  purely  subjective  meaning.  It  is  never 
offered,  by  one  who  has  taken  the  trouble  to  work  it  out 
more  or  less  laboriously  and  then  to  express  it  in  terms 
which  are  certainly  objective,  as  a  mere  announcement  of  de 
facto  determination  or  a  registration  of  arbitrary  whim  and 
caprice.  One  no  more  means  to  announce  a  groundless 
choice  or  a  choice  based  upon  pleasure  felt  in  contemplation 
of  the  imaged  end  than  in  his  judgments  concerning  the 
physical  universe  he  means  to  affirm  coexistences  and 
sequences,  agreements  and  disagreements,  of  "  ideas "  as 
psychical  happenings.  That  there  is  an  ethical  or  economic 
truth  to  which  one  can  appeal  in  doubtful  cases  is,  indeed, 
the  tacit  assumption  in  all  criticism  of  another's  deliberate 
conduct;  the  contrary  assumption,  that  criticism  is  merely 
the  opposition  of  one's  own  private  prejudice  or  desire  to  the 
equally  private  prejudice  or  desire  of  another,  would  render 
all  criticism  and  mutual  discussion  of  ethical  problems  mean- 
ingless and  futile  in  the  plain  man's  apprehension  as  in  the 
philosopher's.  For  the  plain  man  has  a  spontaneous  confi- 
dence in  his  knowledge  of  the  material  world  which  makes 
him  look  askance  at  any  alleged  analysis  of  his  sense- 
perceptions  and  scientific  judgments  into  "associations  of 
ideas,"  and  the  same  confidence,  or  something  very  like  it, 


262  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

attaches  to  judgments  of  these  other  types.  It  may  perhaps 
be  easier  (though  the  concession  is  a  very  doubtful  one)  to 
destroy  a  naive  confidence  in  the  objectivity  of  moral  truth 
than  a  like  confidence  in  scientific  knowledge,  but  it  must 
be  remembered  that  the  plain  man's  sense  of  the  urgency,  at 
least  of  ethical  problems,  if  not  of  economic,  is  commonly  less 
acute  than  for  the  physical.  In  the  plain  man's  experience 
serious  moral  problems  are  infrequent  —  problems  of  the 
true  type,  that  is,  which  cannot  be  disposed  of  as  mere  cases  of 
temptation;  one  must  have  attained  a  considerable  capacity 
for  sympathy  and  a  considerable  knowledge  of  social  rela- 
tions before  either  the  recognition  of  such  problems  or 
proper  understanding-of  their  significance  is  possible.  Moral 
and  economic  crises  are  not  vividly  presented  in  sensuous 
imagery  excepting  in  minds  of  developed  intelligence, 
experience,  and  imaginative  power ;  and  the  judgments 
reached  in  coping  with  them  do  not,  as  a  rule,  obviously  call 
for  nicely  measured,  calculated,  and  adjusted  bodily  move- 
ments. The  immediate  act  of  executing  an  important 
economic  judgment  may  be  a  very  commonplace  perform- 
ance, like  the  dictation  of  a  letter,  and  an  ethical  decision 
may,  however  great  its  importance  for  future  overt  conduct, 
be  expressed  by  no  immediate  visible  movements  of  the 
body.  But  this  possible  difference  of  impressiveness  between 
physical  and  other  types  of  judgments  is  from  our  present 
standpoint  unessential ;  and  indeed,  after  all,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  there  are  persons  whose  sense  of  moral  obliga- 
tion is  quite  as  distinct  and  influential,  and  even  sensuously 
vivid,  as  their  conviction  of  the  real  existence  of  an  external 
world.  To  the  average  man  it  certainly  is  clear  that,  as  Dr. 
Martineau  declares,  "it  is  an  inversion  of  moral  truth  to  say 
....  that  honour  is  higher  than  appetite  because  we  feel 
it  so;  we  feel  it  so  because  it  is  so.  This  'ts'  we  know  to 
be  not  contingent  on  our  apprehension,  not  to  arise  from  our 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  263 

constitution  of  faculty,  but  to  be  a  reality  irrespective  of  us 
in  adaptation  to  which  our  nature  is  constituted,  and  for  the 
recognition  of  which  the  faculty  is  given."1  And  the 
impressiveness,  to  most  minds,  of  likening  the  sublimity  of 
the  moral  law  to  the  visible  splendor  of  the  starry  heavens 
would  seem  to  suggest  that  the  apprehension  of  moral  truth 
is  a  mode  of  consciousness,  in  form  at  least,  so  far  akin  to 
sense-perception  as  to  be  capable  of  illustration  and  even 
reinforcement  from  that  type  of  experience. 

At  this  point  we  must  revert  to  a  suggestion  which  pre- 
sented itself  above  in  another  connection,  but  which  at  the 
time  could  not  be  further  developed.  This  was,  in  a  word,  that 
there  is  often  a  feeling  of  obtrusiveness  in  our  appreciation 
of  the  objectivity  of  the  things  before  us  in  ordinary  sense- 
perception  (or  physical  judgment)  which  is  not  unlike  the 
felt  insistence  of  remorse  and  grief.2  This  feeling  is  so  con- 
spicuous a  feature  of  the  state  of  consciousness  in  physical 
judgment  as  frequently  to  serve  the  plain  man  as  his  last 
and  irrefragable  evidence  of  the  metaphysical  independence 
of  the  material  world,  and  it  is  indeed  a  feature  whose  expla- 
nation does  throw  much  light  upon  the  meaning  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  objectivity  as  a  factor  within  experience.  Now, 
there  is  another  common  feeling  —  or,  as  we  do  not  scruple 
to  call  it,  another  emotion  —  which  is  perhaps  quite  as  often 
appealed  to  in  this  way;  though,  as  we  believe,  never  in 
quite  the  same  connection  in  any  argument  in  which  the 
two  experiences  are  called  upon  to  do  service  to  the  same 
end.  Material  objects,  we  are  told,  are  reliable  and  stable 
as  distinguished  from  the  fleeting  illusive  images  of  a 
dream  —  they  have  a  " solidity"  in  virtue  of  which  one 
can  " depend  upon  them,"  are  "hard  and  fast"  remaining 
faithfully  where  one  deposits  them  for  future  use  or,  if  they 
change  and  disappear,  doing  so  in  accordance  with  fixed 

i  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  Vol.  II,  p.  5.  2  See  p.  253  above. 


264  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

laws  which  make  the  changes  calculable  in  advance.  The 
material  realm  is  the  realm  of  "solid  fact"  in  which  one  can 
work  with  assurance  that  causes  will  infallibly  produce  their 
right  and  proper  effects,  and  to  which  one  willingly  returns 
from  the  dream-world  in  which  his  adversary,  the  "idealist," 
would  hold  him  spellbound.  We  propose  now  briefly  to 
consider  these  two  modes  of  apprehension  of  external  physi- 
cal reality  in  the  light  of  the  general  analysis  of  judgment 
given  above — from  which  it  will  appear  that  they  are,  psy- 
chologically, emotional  expressions  of  what  have  been  set 
forth  as  the  essential  features  of  the  judgment-situation, 
whether  in  its  physical,  ethical,  or  economic  forms.  From 
this  we  shall  argue  thqt  there  should  actually  be  in  the  ethi- 
cal and  economic  spheres  similar,  or  essentially  identical, 
"emotions  of  reality,"  and  we  shall  then  proceed  to  verify 
the  hypothesis  by  pointing  to  those  ethical  and  economic 
experiences  which  answer  the  description. 

We  have  seen  that  the  center  of  attention  or  subject  in 
the  judgment-process  is  as  such  problematic  —  in  the  sense 
that  there  are  certain  of  its  observed  and  recognized  attri- 
butes which  make  it  in  some  sense  relevant  and  useful  to  the 
purpose  in  hand,  while  yet  other  of  its  attributes  (or  absences 
of  certain  attributes)  suggest  conflicting  activities.  The 
object  which  one  sees  is  certainly  a  stone  and  of  convenient 
size  for  hurling  at  the  pursuing  animal.  The  situation  has 
been  analyzed  and  found  to  demand  a  missile,  and  this 
demand  has  led  to  pearch  for  and  recognition  of  a  stone. 
The  stone,  however,  may  be  of  a  color  suggesting  a  soft  and 
crumbling  texture,  or  its  form  may  appear  from  a  distance 
to  be  such  as  to  make  it  practically  certain  to  miss  the  mark, 
however  carefully  it  may  be  aimed  and  thrown.  Until  these 
points  of  difficulty  have  been  ascertained,  the  stone  is  want- 
ing still  in  certain  essential  determinations.  So  far  as  it  has 
been  certainly  determined,  it  prompts  to  the  response  directly 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  265 

suggested  by  one's  general  end  of  defense  and  escape,  but 
there  are  these  other  indications  which  hold  this  response  in 
check  and  which,  if  verified,  will  cause  the  stone  to  be  let  lie 
unused.  Now,  we  have,  in  this  situation  of  conflict  or  ten- 
sion between  opposed  incitements  given  by  the  various  dis- 
criminated characters  of  the  object,  the  explanation  of  the 
aspect  of  obtrusiveness,  of  arbitrary  resistance  to  and  inde- 
pendence of  one's  will,  which  for  the  time  being  seems  the 
unmistakable  mark  or  coefficient  of  the  thing's  objectivity. 
For  it  is  not  the  object  as  a  whole  that  is  obtrusive ;  indeed, 
clearly,  there  could  be  no  obtrusiveness  on  the  part  of  an 
"object  as  a  whole,"  and  in  such  a  case  there  could  also  be 
no  judgment.  The  obtrusion  in  the  case  before  us  is  not  a 
sense  of  the  energy  of  a  recalcitrant  metaphysical  object  put 
forth  upon  a  coerced  and  helpless  human  will,  but  simply 
a  conscious  interpretation  of  the  inhibition  of  certain  of  the 
agent's  motor  tendencies  by  certain  others  prompted  by  the 
object's  "suspicious"  and  as  yet  undetermined  appearances 
or  possible  attributes.  The  object  as  amenable  to  use  — 
those  of  its  qualities  which  taken  by  themselves  are  unques- 
tionable and  clearly  conducive  to  the  agent's  purpose — 
needs  no  attention  for  the  moment,  let  us  say.  The 
attention  is  rather  upon  the  dubious  and  to  all  appearance 
unfavorable  qualities,  and  these  for  the  time  being  make  up 
the  sum  and  content  of  the  agent's  knowledge  of  the  object. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  agent  as  an  active  self  is  identified 
with  the  end  and  with  those  modes  of  response  to  the 
object  which  promise  to  contribute  directly  to  its  realiza- 
tion. It  is  in  this  direction  that  his  interest  is  set  and  he 
strains  with  all  his  powers  of  mind  to  move,  and  it  is  upon 
the  self  as  identified  with,  and  for  the  time  being  expressed 
in,  the  "effort  of  the  agent's  will"  that  the  object  as  resist- 
ant, refusing  to  be  misconstrued,  obtrudes.  One  must  see 
the  object  and  must  acknowledge  its  apparent,  or  in  the  end 


266  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

its  ascertained,  unfitness.  One  is  "coerced."  The  situation 
is  one  of  conflict,  and  it  is  out  of  the  conflict  that  the  essen- 
tially emotional  experience  of  "resistance"  emerges.1  The 
the  more  special  emotions  of  impatience,  anger,  or  discour- 
agement may  in  a  given  case  not  be  present  or  may  be  sup- 
pressed, but  the  emotion  of  objectivity  will  still  remain.2 

On  the  same  general  principles  the  other  of  our  two 
coefficients  of  reality  may  be  explained.  Let  us  assume  that 
the  stone  in  our  illustration  has  at  last  been  cleared  of  all 
ambiguity  in  its  suggestion,  having  been  taken  as  a  missile, 
and  that  the  man  in  flight  now  holds  it  ready  awaiting  the 
most  favorable  moment  for  hurling  it  at  his  pursuer.  It 
will  hardly  be  maintained  that  under  these  conditions  the 
coefficient  of  the  stone's  reality  as  an  object  consists  in  its 
obtrusiveness,  in  its  resistance  to  or  coercion  of  the  self. 
The  stone  is  now  regarded  as  a  fixed  and  determinate  feature 
of  the  situation — a  condition  which  can  be  counted  on, 
whatever  else  may  fail.  Over  against  other  still  uncertain 
aspects  of  the  situation  (which  are  now  in  their  turn  real 
because  resistant,  coercive,  and  obtrusive)  stands  the  stone 
as  a  reassuring  fact  upon  and  about  which  the  agent  can 
build  up  the  whole  plan  of  conduct  which  may,  if  all  goes 
well,  bring  him  safely  out  of  his  predicament.  The  stone 
has,  so  to  speak,  passed  over  to  the  "  end  "  side  of  the  situa- 
tion, and  although  it  may  have  to  be  rejected  for  some  other 

1  It  is  not  so  much  the  case  that  the  object,  on  the  one  side,  excites  in  the  agent's 
consciousness,  on  the  other,  the  "  sensations  of  resistance  "  which  have  played  such 
a  part  in  recent  controversy  on  the  subject,  as  that  (1)  the  object  in  certain  of  its 
promptings  is  "resisting"  certain  other  of  its  promptings,  or  that  (2)  certain 
"positive'1  activities  of  the  agent  are  being  inhibited  by  certain  "negative"  activi- 
ties, thereby  giving  rise  to  the  "emotion  of  resistance."  That  "positive"  and 
"negative"  are  here  used  in  a  teleological  way  will  be  apparent.  It  is  surely  mis- 
leading to  speak  of  "sensations  of  resistance  "  even  in  deprecatory  quotation  marks, 
except  as  "sensation"  is  used  in  its  everyday  meaning,  viz.,  experience  of  strongly 
sensory  quality. 

*  The  general  theory  of  emotion  which  is  here  presupposed,  and  indeed  is  funda- 
mental to  the  entire  discussion,  may  be  found  in  PBOFESSOR  DEWEY'S  papers  on 
"  The  Theory  of  Emotion,"  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  I,  p.  553;  Vol.  II,  p.  13. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PKOCESS  267 

means  of  defense,  as  the  definition  of  the  situation  proceeds 
and  the  plan  of  action  accordingly  changes  (as  in  some  degree 
it  probably  must),  nevertheless  for  the  time  being  the  imaged 
activities  as  stimulus  to  which  the  stone  is  now  accepted  are 
a  fixed  part  of  the  plan  and  guide  in  further  judgment  of 
the  means  still  undefined.  The  agent  can  hardly  recur  to 
the  stone,  when,  after  attending  for  a  time  to  the  bewilder- 
ing perplexities  of  the  situation,  he  pauses  once  more  to  take 
an  inventory  of  his  certain  resources,  without  something  of 
an  emotional  thrill  of  assurance  and  encouragement.  In 
this  emotional  appreciation  of  the  "  solidity"  and  "dependa- 
bility" of  the  object  the  second  of  our  coefficients  of  reality 
consists.  This  might  be  termed  the  Recognition,  the  other 
the  Perception,  coefficient.  Classifying  them  as  emotions, 
because  both  are  phenomena  of  tension  in  activity,  we  should 
group  the  Perception  coefficient  with  emotions  of  the  Con- 
traction type,  like  grief  and  anger,  and  the  Recognition 
coefficient  with  the  Expansion  emotions,  like  joy  and  triumph. 
Now,  in  the  foregoing  interpretation  no  reference  has 
been  made  to  any  conditions  peculiar  to  the  physical  type  of 
judgment-situation.  The  ground  of  explanation  has  been 
the  feature  of  arrest  of  activity  for  the  sake  of  reconstruction, 
and  this,  if  our  analyses  have  been  correct,  is  the  essence  of 
the  ethical  and  economic  situations  as  well  as  of  the  physi- 
cal. Can  there  then  be  found  in  these  two  spheres  experi- 
ences of  the  same  nature  and  emerging  under  the  same 
general  conditions  as  our  Perception  and  Recognition  coeffi- 
cients of  reality?  If  so,  then  our  case  for  the  objective 
significance  and  value  of  ethical  and  economic  judgment  is 
in  so  far  strengthened.  (1)  In  the  first  place,  then,  the 
object  in  its  economic  character  is  problematic,  assuming 
a  desire  on  the  agent's  part  to  apply  it,  as  means,  to  some 
new  or  freshly  interesting  end,  because  it  has  already  been, 
and  accordingly  now  is,  set  apart  for  other  uses  and  cannot 


268  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

t 

thoughtlessly  be  withdrawn  from  them.  Extended  illustra- 
tion is  not  needed  to  remind  one  that  these  established  and 
hitherto  unquestioned  uses  will  haunt  the  economic  con- 
science as  obtrusively  and  inhibit  the  desired  course  of  eco- 
nomic conduct  with  as  much  energy  of  resistance  as  in  the 
other  case  will  any  of  the  contrary  promptings  of  a  physical 
object.  Moreover,  the  Recognition  coefficient  may  as  easily 
be  identified  in  this  connection.  If  one's  scruples  gain  the 
day,  in  such  a  case  one  has  at  least  a  sense  of  comforting 
assurance  in  the  conservatism  of  his  choice  and  its  accord- 
ance with  the  facts,  however  unreconciled  in  another  way 
one  may  be  to  the  deprivation  that  has  thus  seemed  to  be 
necessary.  If,  however,  the  new  end  in  a  measure  makes 
good  its  case  and  the  modes  of  expenditure  which  the  "  scru- 
ples" represented  have  been  readjusted  in  accordance  with  it, 
then  the  means,  no  less  than  before  the  new  interpretation  had 
been  placed  upon  them,  will  enjoy  the  status  of  Reality  in 
the  economic  sense.  They  will  be  real  now,  however,  not  in 
the  obtrusive  way,  as  presenting  aspects  which  inhibit  the 
leading  tendency  in  the  judgment-process,  but,  instead,  as 
means  having  a  fixed  and  certain  character  in  one's  economic 
life,  which,  after  the  hesitation  and  doubt  just  now  super- 
seded, on$  may  safely  count  upon  and  will  do  well  to  keep 
in  view  henceforth.  (2)  In  the  second  place,  mere  mention 
of  the  corresponding  ethical  experiences  must  suffice,  since 
only  extended  illustration  from  literature  and  life  would  be 
fully  adequate:  on  the  one  hand,  the  "still  small  voice"  of 
Conscience  or  the  authoritativeness  of  Duty,  "stern  daugh- 
ter of  the  voice  of  God;"  and,  on  the  other,  the  restful 
assurance  with  which,  from  the  vantage-ground  of  a  satisfy- 
ing decision,  one  may  look  back  in  wonder  at  the  possibility 
of  so  serious  a  temptation  or  in  rejoicing  over  the  new-won 
freedom  from  a  burdensome  and  repressive  prejudice. 

This  must  for  the  present  serve  as  positive  exposition  of 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PBOCESS  269 

our  view  as  to  the  objective  significance  of  the  valuational 
types  of  judgment.  There  are  certain  essential  points  which 
have  as  yet  not  been  touched  upon,  and  there  are  certain 
objections  to  the  general  view  the  consideration  of  which 
will  serve  further  to  explain  it ;  but  the  discussion  of  these 
various  matters  will  more  conveniently  follow  the  special 
analysis  of  the  valuational  judgments,  to  which  we  shall  now 

proceed. 

IV 

In  the  last  analysis  the  ultimate  motive  of  all  reflective 
thought  is  the  progressive  determination  of  the  ends  of 
conduct.  Physical  judgment,  or,  in  psychological  terms, 
reflective  attention  to  objects  in  the  physical  world,  is  at 
every  turn  directed  and  controlled  by  reference  to  a  gradu- 
ally developing  purpose,  so  that  the  process  may  also  be 
described  as  one  of  bringing  to  fulness  of  definition  an  at 
first  vaguely  conceived  purpose  through  ascertainment  and 
determination  of  the  means  at  hand.  The  problematic  situa- 
tion in  which  reflection  takes  its  rise  inevitably  develops  in 
this  two-sided  way  into  consciousness  of  a  definite  end 
on  the  one  side,  and  of  the  means  or  conditions  of  attaining 
it  on  the  other. 

It  has  been  shown  that  there  may  be  involved  in  any 
finally  satisfactory  determination  of  a  situation  an  explicit 
reflection  upon  and  definition  of  the  controlling  end  which 
is  present  and  gives  point  and  direction  to  the  physical 
determination.  But  very  often  such  is  not  the  case.  When 
a  child  sees  a  bright  object  at  a  distance  and  makes  toward 
it,  availing  himself  more  or  less  skilfully  of  such  assistance 
as  intervening  articles  of  furniture  may  afford,  there  is  of 
course  no  consciousness  on  his  part  of  any  definite  purpose 
as  such,  and  this  is  to  say  that  the  child  does  not  subject  his 
conduct  to  criticism  from  the  standpoint  of  the  value  of  its 
ends.  There  is  simply  strong  desire  for  the  distant  red  ball, 


270  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

controlling  all  the  child's  movements  for  the  time  being  and 
prompting  a  more  or  less  critical  inspection  of  the  interven- 
ing territory  with  reference  to  the  easiest  way  of  crossing 
it.  The  purpose  is  implicitly  accepted,  not  explicitly  de- 
termined, as  a  preliminary  to  physical  determination  of  the 
situation.  If  one  may  speak  of  a  development  of  the  pur- 
pose in  such  a  case  as  this,  one  must  say  that  the  develop- 
ment into  details  comes  through  judgment  of  the  environing 
conditions.  To  change  the  illustration  in  order  not  to 
commit  ourselves  to  the  ascription  of  too  developed  a 
faculty  of  judgment  to  the  child,  this  is  true  likewise  of 
any  process  of  reflective  attention  in  the  mind  of  an  adult  in 
which  a  general  purpose  'is  accepted  at  the  outset  and  is  car- 
ried through  to  execution  without  reflection  upon  its  ethical 
or  economic  character  as  a  purpose.  The  specific  purpose 
as  executed  is  certainly  not  the  same  as  the  general  purpose 
with  which  the  reflective  process  took  its  rise.  It  is  filled 
out  with  details,  or  may  perhaps  even  be  quite  different  in 
its  general  outlines.  There  has  necessarily  been  develop- 
ment and  perhaps  even  transformation,  but  our  contention  is 
that  all  this  has  been  effected  in  and  through  a  process  of 
judgment  in  which  the  conditions  of  action,  and  not  the 
purpose  itself,  have  been  the  immediate  objects  of  determi- 
nation. Upon  these  the  attention  has  been  centered,  though 
of  course  the  attention  was  directed  to  them  by  the  purpose. 
To  state  the  case  in  logical  terms,  it  has  been  only  through 
selection  and  determination  of  the  means  and  conditions  of 
action  from  the  standpoint  of  predicates  suggested  by  the 
general  purpose  accepted  at  the  outset  that  this  purpose 
itself  had  been  rendered  definite  and  practical  and  possible 
of  execution.  Probably  such  cases  are  seldom  to  be  found  in 
the  adult  experience.  As  a  rule,  the  course  of  physical  or 
technological  judgment  will  almost  always  bring  to  light 
implications  involved  in  the  accepted  purpose  which  must 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  271 

inevitably  raise  ethical  and  economic  questions;  and  the 
resolution  of  these  latter  will  in  turn  afford  new  points  of 
view  for  further  physical  determination  of  the  situation.  In 
such  processes  the  logical  nature  of  the  problem  of  ethical 
and  economic  valuation  comes  clearly  into  view. 

In  our  earlier  account  of  the  matter  it  was  more  con- 
venient to  use  language  which  implied  that  ethical  and 
economic  judgment  must  be  preceded  by  implicit  or  explicit 
acceptance  of  a  definite  situation  presented  in  sense- 
perception,  and  that  these  evaluating  judgments  could  be 
carried  through  to  their  goal  only  upon  the  basis  of  such  an 
inventory  of  fixed  conditions.  Thus  the  ultimate  ethical 
quality  of  the  general  purpose  of  building  a  house  would 
seem  to  depend  upon  the  precise  form  which  this  purpose 
comes  to  assume  after  the  actual  presence  and  the  quality  of 
the  means  of  building  have  been  ascertained  and  the  eco- 
nomic bearings  of  the  proposed  expenditure  have  been 
considered.  Surely  it  is  a  waste  of  effort  to  debate  with 
oneself  upon  the  ethical  Tightness  of  a  project  which  is  physi- 
cally impossible  or  else  out  of  the  question  from  the  economic 
point  of  view.  We  are,  however,  now  in  a  position  to  see 
that  this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter  is  both  inaccurate  and 
self -contradictory.  In  the  actual  development  of  our  pur- 
poses there  is  no  such  orderly  and  inflexible  arrangement  of 
stages;  and  if  it  is  a  waste  of  effort  to  deliberate  upon  a 

O          7  A 

purpose  that  is  physically  impossible,  it  may,  with  still 
greater  force,  be  argued  that  we  cannot  find,  and  judge  the 
fitness  of,  the  necessary  physical  means  until  we  know  what, 
precisely,  it  is  that  we  wish  to  do.  The  truth  is  that  there  is 
constant  interplay  and  interaction  between  the  various  phases 
of  the  inclusive  judgment-process,  or  rather,  more  than  this, 
that  there  is  a  complete  and  thoroughgoing  mutual  implica- 
tion. It  is  indeed  true  that  our  ethical  purposes  cannot  take 
form  in  a  vacuum  apart  from  consideration  of  their  physical 


272  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

and  economic  possibility,  but  it  is  also  true  that  our  physical 
and  economic  problems  are  ultimately  meaningless  and 
impossible,  whether  of  statement  or  of  solution,  except  as 
they  are  interpreted  as  arising  in  the  course  of  ethical 
conflict. 

We  have,  then,  to  do,  in  the  present  division,  with  situa- 
tions in  which,  whether  at  the  outset  or  from  time  to  time 
during  the  course  of  the  reflective  process,  there  is  explicit 
conflict  between  ends  of  conduct.  These  situations  are  the 
special  province  of  the  judgment  of  valuation.  Our  line  of 
argument  may  be  briefly  indicated  in  advance  as  follows: 

1.  The  judgment  of  valuation,  whether  expressed  in  terms 
of  the  individual  experience  or  in  terms  of  social  evolution,  is 
essentially  the  process  of  the  explicit  and  deliberate  resolu- 
tion of  conflict  between  ends.  As  an  incidental,  though 
nearly  always  indispensable,  step  to  the  final  resolution  of 
such  conflict,  physical  judgment,  or,  in  general,  the  judgment 
of  fact  or  existence,  plays  its  part,  this  part  being  to  define 
the  situation  in  terms  of  the  means  necessary  for  the  execu- 
tion of  the  end  that  is  gradually  taking  form.  The  two 
modes  of  judgment  mutually  incite  and  control  each  other, 
and  neither  could  continue  to  any  useful  purpose  without 
this  incitement  and  control  of  the  other.  Both  modes  of 
judgment  are  objective  in  content  and  significance.  At  the 
end  of  the  reflective  process  and  immediately  upon  the  verge 
of  execution  of  the  end  or  purpose  which  has  taken  form  the 
result  may  be  stated  or  apprehended  in  either  of  two  ways : 
(1)  directly,  in  terms  of  the  end,  and  (2)  indirectly,  in  terms 
of  the  ordered  system  of  existent  means  which  have  been  dis- 
covered, determined,  and  arranged.  If  such  final  survey  of 
the  result  be  taken  by  way  of  preparation  for  action,  or  for 
whatever  reason,  the  end  will  be  apprehended  as  possessing 
ethical  value  and  the  means,  under  conditions  later  to  be 
specified,  as  possessing  economic  value. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  273 

2.  What  then  is  the  nature  and  source  of  this  apprehen- 
sion of  end  or  means  as  valuable  ?  The  consciousness  of  end 
or  means  as  valuable  is  an  emotional  consciousness  expressive 
of  the  agent's  practical  attitude  as  determined  in  the  just 
completed  judgment  of  ethical  or  economic  valuation  and 
arising  in  consequence  of  the  inhibition  placed  upon  the 
activities  which  constitute  the  attitude  by  the  effort  of 
apprehending  or  imaging  the  valued  object.  Ethical  and 
economic  value  are  thus  strictly  correlative ;  psychologically 
they  are  emotional  incidents  of  apprehending  in  the  two 
respective  ways  just  indicated  the  same  total  result  of  the 
inclusive  complex  judgment -process.  Finally,  as  the  mo- 
ment of  action  comes  on,  the  consciousness  of  the  ethically 
valued  end  lapses  first;  then  the  consciousness  of  economic 
value  is  lost  in  a  purely  "physical,"  i.  e.,  technological,  con- 
sciousness of  the  means  and  their  properties  and  interrela- 
tions in  the  ordered  system  which  has  been  arranged;  and 
this  finally  merges  into  the  immediate  and  undifferentiated 
consciousness  of  activity  as  use  of  the  means  becomes  sure 
and  unhesitating. 

When  we  say  that  the  ends  which  oppose  each  other  in  an 
ethical  situation  (that  is,  a  situation  for  the  time  being  seen  in 
an  ethical  aspect)  are  related,  and  the  ends  in  an  economic 
situation  are  not,  we  by  no  means  wish  to  imply  that  in  the  one 
case  we  have  in  this  fact  of  relatedness  a  satisfactory  solution 
at  hand  which  is  wanting  in  the  other.  To  feel,  for  example, 
that  there  is  a  direct  and  inherent  relationship  between  a 
cherished  purpose  of  self-culture  and  an  ideal  of  social  service 
which  seems  now  to  require  the  abandonment  of  the  purpose 
does  not  mean  that  one  yet  knows  just  how  the  two  ends  should 
be  related  in  his  life  henceforth;  and  again,  to  say  that  one 
can  see  no  inherent  relation  between  a  desire  for  books  and 
pictures  and  the  need  of  food,  excepting  in  so  far  as  both  ends 
depend  for  their  realization  upon  a  limited  supply  of  means, 


274  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

is  not  to  say  that  the  issue  of  the  conflict  is  not  of  ethical 
significance.  Such  a  view  as  we  here  reject  would  amount  to 
a  denial  of  the  possibility  of  genuinely  problematic  ethical 
situations1  and  would  accord  with  the  opinion  that  economic 
judgment  as  such  lies  apart  from  the  sphere  of  ethics  and  is 
at  most  subject  only  to  occasional  revision  and  control  in  the 
light  of  ethical  considerations. 

By  the  relatedness  of  the  ends  in  a  situation  we  mean  the 
fact,  more  or  less  explicitly  recognized  by  the  agent,  that  the 
new,  and  as  yet  undefined,  purpose  which  has  arisen  belongs 
in  the  same  system  with  the  end,  or  group  of  ends,  which 
the  standard  inhibiting  immediate  action  represents.  The 
standard  inhibits  action  in  obedience  to  the  impulse  that  has 
come  to  consciousness,  and  the  image  of  the  new  end  is,  on 
its  part,  definite  and  impressive  enough  to  inhibit  action  in 
obedience  to  the  standard.  The  relatedness  of  the  two 
factors  is  shown  in  a  practical  way  by  the  fact  that,  in  the 
first  instance  at  least,  they  are  tacitly  expected  to  work  out 
their  own  adjustment.  By  the  process  already  described  in 
outline,  subject  and  predicate  begin  to  develop  and  thereby 
to  approach  each  other,  and  a  provisional  or  partial  solution 
of  the  problem  may  thus  be  reached  without  resort  to  any 
other  method  than  that  of  direct  comparison  and  adjustment 
of  the  ends  involved  on  either  side.  The  standard  which 
has  been  called  in  question  has  enough  of  congruence  with 
the  new  imaged  purpose  to  admit  of  at  least  some  progress 
toward  a  solution  through  this  method. 

We  can  best  come  to  an  understanding  of  this  recogni- 
tion of  the  relatedness  of  the  ends  in  ethical  valuation  by 
pausing  to  examine  somewhat  carefully  into  the  conditions 
involved  in  the  acceptance  or  reflective  acknowledgment  of 
a  defined  end  of  conduct  as  being  one's  own.  Any  new  end 

i  Such  is,  in  fact,  the  teaching  of  the  various  forms  of  ethical  intuitionism, 
and  we  find  it  not  merely  implied,  but  explicitly  affirmed,  in  a  work  in  many  respects 
so  remote  from  intaitionism  in  its  standpoint  as  GBEEN'S  Prolegomena  to  Ethics. 
See  pp.  178-81,  and  especially  pp.  355-9. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  275 

in  coming  to  consciousness  encounters  some  more  or  less 
firmly  established  habit  represented  in  consciousness  by  a 
sign  or  symbolic  image  of  some  sort,  the  habit  being  itself 
the  outcome  of  past  judgment-process.  Our  present  problem 
is  the  significance  of  the  agent's  recognition  of  a  relatedness 
between  his  new  impulsive  end  and  the  end  which  represents 
the  habit,  and  we  shall  best  approach  its  solution  by  consider- 
ing the  various  factors  and  conditions  involved  in  the  agent's 
conscious  recognition  of  the  established  end  as  being  such. 

In  any  determinate  end  there  is  inevitably  implied  a 
number  of  groups  of  factual  judgments  in  which  are  pre- 
sented the  objective  conditions  under  which  execution  of  the 
end  or  purpose  must  take  place.  There  is  in  the  first  place 
a  general  view  of  environing  conditions,  physical  and  social, 
presented  in  a  group  of  judgments  (1)  descriptive  of  the 
means  at  hand,  of  the  topography  of  the  region  in  which  the 
purpose  is  to  be  carried  out,  of  climatic  conditions,  and  the 
like,  and  (2)  descriptive  of  the  habits  of  thought  and  feeling 
of  the  people  with  whom  one  is  to  deal,  their  prejudices, 
their  tastes,  and  their  institutions.  The  project  decided  on 
may,  let  us  say,  be  an  individual  or  a  national  enterprise, 
whether  philanthropic  or  commercial,  which  is  to  be  launched 
in  a  distant  country  peopled  by  partly  civilized  races.  In 
addition  to  these  groups  of  judgments  upon  the  physical  and 
sociological  conditions  under  which  the  work  must  proceed, 
there  will  also  be  a  more  or  less  adequate  and  impartial 
knowledge  of  one's  own  physical  and  mental  fitness  for  the 
enterprise,  since  the  work  as  projected  may  promise  to  tax 
one's  physical  powers  severely  and  to  require,  for  its  suc- 
cessful conduct,  large  measure  of  industry,  devotion,  patience, 
and  wisdom.  Indeed  any  determinate  purpose  whatever 
inevitably  implies  a  more  or  less  varied  and  comprehensive 
inventory  of  conditions.  Further  illustration  is  not  neces- 
sary for  our  present  purpose.  We  may  say  that  in  a  general 


276  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

way  the  conditions  relevant  to  a  practical  purpose  will  group 
themselves  naturally  under  four  heads  of  classification,  as 
physical,  sociological,  physiological,  and  psychological.  All 
four  classes  are  objective,  though  the  last  two  embrace  con- 
ditions peculiar  to  the  agent  as  an  individual  over  against 
the  environment  to  which  for  purposes  of  his  present  activity 
he  stands  in  a  sense  opposed. 

Now  our  present  interest  is  not  so  much  in  the  enumera- 
tion and  classification  of  possible  relevant  conditions  in  a  typi- 
cal situation  as  in  the  significance  of  these  relevant  conditions 
in  the  agent's  apprehension  of  them.  Perhaps  this  signifi- 
cance cannot  better  be  described  than  by  saying  that  essen- 
tially and  impressively  the  conditions  are  apprehended  as, 
taken  together,  warranting  the  purpose  that  has  been  de- 
termined. We  appeal,  in  support  of  this  account  of  the 
matter,  to  an  impartial  introspection  of  the  way  in  which 
the  means  and  conditions  of  action  stand  related  to  the 
formed  purpose  in  the  moment  of  survey  of  a  situation.  The 
various  details  presented  in  the  survey  of  a  situation  are 
apprehended,  not  as  bare  facts  such  as  one  might  find  set 
down  in  a  scientist's  notebook,  but  as  warranting — as  closely, 
uniquely,  and  vitally  relevant  to — the  action  that  is  about  to 
be  taken.  *  This,  as  we  believe,  is  a  fair  account  of  the  situa- 
tion in  even  the  commoner  and  simpler  emergencies  that 
confront  the  ordinary  man.  Quite  conspicuously  is  it  true 
of  cases  in  which  the  purpose  is  a  purely  technological  one 
that  has  been  worked  out  with  considerable  difficulty  and  is 
therefore  not  executed  until  after  a  somewhat  careful  survey 
of  conditions  has  been  taken.  It  is  often  true  likewise  in 
cases  of  express  ethical  judgment;  if  the  ethical  phases  of 
the  reflective  process  have  not  been  excessively  long  and 
difficult,  our  definite  sense  of  the  ethical  value  of  the  act  we 
are  about  to  do  lapses  quite  easily,  and  the  factual  aspects 
and  features  of  the  situation  as  given  in  one  or  more  of  the 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PKOCESS  277 

four  classes  which  we  have  distinguished  take  on  an  access 
of  significance  in  their  character  of  warranting,  confirming, 
or  even  compelling  the  act  determined  upon.  Of  our  ordi- 
nary sense-perception  in  the  moments  of  its  actual  function- 
ing no  less  than  of  conscience  in  its  aspect  -of  a  moral 
perceptive  faculty  are  the  words  of  Bishop  Butler  sensibly 
true  that  "to  preside  and  govern,  from  the  very  economy 
and  constitution  of  man,  belongs  to  it."1  Even  in  cases  of 
more  serious  moral  difficulty  this  sanctioning  aspect  of  the 
means  and  conditions  of  action  is  not  overshadowed.  If  the 
situation  is  one  in  which  by  reason  of  their  complexity  these 
play  a  conspicuous  r6le  and  must  be  surveyed,  by  way  of 
preparation  on  the  agents'  part,  for  performance  of  the  act, 
they  inevitably  assume,  for  the  agent,  their  proper  functional 
character.  In  general,  the  conditions  presented  in  the 
system  of  factual  judgments  have  a  certain  "rightful  author- 
ity" which  they  seem  to  lend  to  the  purpose  or  end  with 
reference  to  which  they  were  worked  out  to  their  present 
degree  of  factual  detail.  The  conditions  can  thus  seem  to 
sanction  the  end  because  conditions  and  end  have  been 
worked  out  together.  Gradual  development  on  the  one  side 
prompts  analytical  inquiry  upon  the  other  and  is  in  turn 
directed  and  advanced  by  the  results  of  this  inquiry.  In 
the  end  the  result  may  be  read  off  either  in  terms  of  end  or  in 
terms  of  conditions  and  means.2  The  two  readings  must  be 
in  accord  and  the  agent's  apprehension  of  the  conditions  as 
warrant  for  the  end  is  expression  in  consciousness  of  this 
"agreement."3 

Now  in  this  mode  of  apprehension  of  factual  conditions 
there  is  a  highly  important  logical  implication — an  implica- 

1  Sermon  II. 

2  Not  to  imply  of  course  that  psychologically  or  logically  the  distinction  of  con- 
ditions and  means  is  other  than  a  convenient  superficial  one. 

3  Manifestly  we  have  here  been  approaching  from  a  new  direction  the  "Becog- 
nition  coefficient "  of  reality  described  above.    See  p.  266. 


278  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

tion  which  inevitably  comes  more  and  more  clearly  into  view 
with  the  continued  exercise  of  judgment,  even  though  the 
agent's  habit  of  interest  in  the  scrutiny  of  perplexing  situ- 
ations may  still  remain,  by  reason  of  the  want  of  trained 
capacity  for  a  broader  view,  limited  in  its  range  quite  strictly 
to  the  physical  sphere.  This  implication  is,  we  shall  declare 
at  once,  that  of  an  endeavoring,  striving,  active  principle  or 
self  which  can  be  helped  or  hindered  in  its  unfolding  by 
particular  purposes  and  sets  of  corresponding  conditions — 
can  lose  or  gain,  through  devotion  to  particular  purposes,  in 
the  breadth,  fulness,  and  energy  of  its  life.  The  agent's 
apprehension  of  and  reference  to  this  active  principle  of 
course  varies  in  all  degrees  of  explicitness,  according  to  cir- 
cumstances, from  the  vague  awareness  that  is  present  in  a 
simple  case  of  physical  judgment  to  the  clear  recognition  and 
endeavor  at  definition  that  are  characteristic  of  serious 
ethical  crises. 

That  the  situation  should  develop  and  bring  to  light  this 
factor  is  what  should  be  expected  on  general  grounds  of 
logic — for  to  say  that  a  set  of  conditions  warrants  or  sanctions 
or  confirms  a  given  purpose  implies  that  our  purposes  can 
stand  in  need  of  warrant,  and  this  would  seem  to  be  impos- 
sible apart  from  reference  to  a  process  whose  maintenance  and 
development  in  and  through  our  purposes  are  assumed  as  being 
as  a  matter  of  course  desirable.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  our  con- 
tention that  the  apprehension  of  the  conditions  of  action  as 
warranting  the  end  is  a  primordial  and  necessary  feature  of 
the  situation — indeed,  its  constitutive  feature.  If  our  concern 
were  with  the  psychological  development  of  self -consciousness 
as  a  phase  of  reflective  experience,  we  should  endeavor  to  show 
that  this  development  is  mediated  in  the  first  instance  by  the 
"subjective"  phenomena  of  feeling,  emotion,  and  desire 
which  find  their  place  in  the  course  of  the  judgment-process. 
We  should  then  hold  that,  with  the  conclusion  of  the  judg- 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  279 

ment-process  and  the  accompanying  sense  of  the  known 
conditions  as  reassuring  and  confirmatory  of  the  end,  comes 
the  earliest  possibility  of  a  discriminative  recognition  of  the 
self  as  having  been  all  along  a  necessary  factor  in  the 
process.  We  should  hold  that  outside  of  the  process  of  re- 
flective attention  there  can  be  no  psychical  or  "elementary" 
beginnings  of  self-consciousness,  and  then  that,  except  as 
a  development  out  of  the  experience  to  which  we  have  re- 
ferred as  marking  the  conclusion  of  the  attentive  process, 
there  can  be  no  recognized  specific  and  in  any  degree  defin- 
able consciousness  of  self.  All  this,  however,  lies  rather 
beside  our  present  purpose.  We  wish  simply  to  insist  that 
it  is  out  of  the  apprehension  of  conditions  as  reassuring  and 
confirmatory,  out  of  this  "primordial  germ,"  that  the  agent's 
definite  recognition  of  himself  as  a  center  of  development 
and  expenditure  of  energy  takes  its  rise.  Here  are  the 
beginnings  of  the  possibility  of  self-conscious  ethical  and 
economic  valuation. 

This  apprehension  of  the  means  as  warranting  is,  we  have 
held,  a  fact  even  when  the  means  surveyed  are  wholly  of  the 
physical  sort,  and  we  have  thereby  implied  that  consciousness 
of  the  self  as  "energetic"  may  take  its  rise  in  situations  of 
this  type  or  during  the  physical  stage  in  the  development  of 
a  more  complex  total  situation.  It  would  be  an  interesting 
speculation  to  consider  to  what  extent  and  in  what  way  the 
development  of  the  sciences  of  sociology  and  physiology  may 
have  been  essentially  facilitated  by  the  emergence  of  this 
form  of  self -consciousness.  But  however  the  case  may  stand 
with  these  sciences  or  with  the  rise  of  real  interest  in  them 
in  the  mind  of  a  given  individual,  interest  in  the  objective 
psychological  conditions  of  a  contemplated  act  is  certainly 
very  closely  dependent  upon  interest  in  that  subjective  self 
which  one  has  learned  to  know  through  the  past  exercise  of 
judgment  in  definition  and  contemplation  of  conditions  of 


280  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

the  three  other  kinds.  The  more  diversified  and  complex 
the  array  of  physical  and  social  conditions  with  reference  to 
which  one  is  to  act,  the  more  important  becomes  not  simply 
a  clearly  articulated  knowledge  of  these,  but  also  a  knowledge 
of  oneself.  The  self  that  is  warranted  in  its  purpose  by  the 
surveyed  conditions  must  hold  itself  in  a  steady  and  consistent 
attitude  during  the  performance  on  pain  of  "falling  short  of 
its  opportunity"  and  thereby  rendering  nugatory  the  reflect- 
ive process  in  which  the  purpose  was  worked  out.  Experi- 
ence abundantly  shows  how  easily  the  assurance  that  comes 
with  the  survey  of  conditions  may  come  to  grief,  though 
there  may  have  been  on  the  side  of  the  conditions,  so  far  as 
defined,  no  visible  change ;  and  in  so  far  as  self-consciousness 
has  already  emerged  as  a  distinguishable  factor  in  such 
situations,  failures  of  the  sort  we  here  refer  to  are  the  more 
easily  identified  and  interpreted.  Some  sudden  impulse  may 
have  broken  in  upon  the  execution  of  the  chosen  purpose; 
there  may  have  been  an  unexpected  shift  of  interest  away 
from  that  general  phase  of  life  which  the  purpose  repre- 
sented ;  or  in  any  one  of  a  number  of  other  ways  may  have 
come  about  a  wavering  and  a  slackening  in  the  resolution 
which  marked  the  commencement  of  action.  The  "energetic" 
self  forthwith  (if  we  may  so  express  it)  recognizes  that  the 
sanction  which  the  conditions  so  far  as  then  known  gave  to 
its  purpose  was  a  misleading  because  an  incomplete  one,  and 
it  proceeds  to  develop  within  itself  a  new  range  of  objective 
fact  in  which  may  be  worked  out  the  explanation,  and  thereby 
a  method  of  control,  of  these  new  disturbing  phenomena. 
The  qualities  of  patience  under  disappointment,  courage  in 
encountering  resistance,  steadiness  and  self-control  in  sus- 
tained and  difficult  effort — these  qualities  and  others  of  like 
nature  come  to  be  discriminated  from  each  other  by  intro- 
spective analysis  and  may  be  as  accurately  measured,  and  in 
general  as  objectively  studied,  as  any  of  the  conditions  to  a 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PKOCESS  281 

saving  knowledge  and  respect  of  which  one  may  already 
have  attained,  and  these  newly  determined  psychological 
conditions  will  henceforth  play  the  same  part  in  affording 
sanction  to  one's  purposes  as  do  the  rest.  An  ordered  system 
of  psychological  categories  or  points  of  view  comes  to  be 
developed,  and  an  accurate  statement  of  conditions  of  per- 
sonal disposition  and  capacity  relevant  to  each  emergency  as 
it  arises  will  hereafter  be  worked  out — over  against  and  in 
tension  with  one's  gradually  forming  purposes  in  like  manner 
as  are  statements  of  all  the  other  relevant  objective  aspects 
of  the  situation.1 

In  the  "energetic"  self,  we  shall  now  seek  to  show,  we 
have  the  common  and  essential  principle  of  both  ethical  and 
economic  valuation  which  marks  these  off  from  other  and  sub- 
ordinate types  of  judgment.  Let  us  determine  as  definitely 
as  possible  the  nature  and  function  of  this  principle. 

The  recognition  of  the  chosen  purpose  as  one  favorable 
or  otherwise  to  the  self,  and  so  the  recognition  of  the  self  as 
capable  of  furtherance  or  retardation  by  its  chosen  purposes, 
is  not  always  a  feature  of  the  state  of  mind  which  may  ensue 
upon  completed  judgment.  In  the  commoner  situations  of 
the  everyday  life  of  normal  persons,  as  practically  always  in 
the  lives  of  persons  of  relatively  undeveloped  reflective  powers, 
it  is  quite  wanting  as  a  separate  distinguished  phase  of  the 
experience.  In  such  cases  it  is  present,  if  present  at  all, 
merely  as  the  vaguely  felt  implicit  meaning  of  the  recogni- 
tion that  the  known  conditions  sanction  and  confirm  the 

i  This,  if  it  were  intended  as  an  account  of  the  genesis  of  psychology  as  a  science 
and  of  the  psychological  interest  on  the  part  of  the  individual,  would  doubtless  be 
most  inadequate.  We  have,  for  one  thing,  made  no  mention  of  the  part  which  error 
and  resulting  practical  failure  play  in  stimulating  an  interest  in  the  judgmental 
processes  of  observation  and  the  like,  and  in  technique  of  the  control  of  these.  Here, 
as  well  as  in  the  processes  of  execution  of  our  purposes,  must  be  found  many  of  the 
roots  of  psychology  as  a  science.  Moreover,  no  explanation  has  been  offered  above 
for  the  appropriation  by  the  "energetic"  self  of  these  phenomena  of  interruption 
and  retardation  of  its  energy  as  being,  in  fact,  its  own,  or  within  itself.  The  problem 
would  appear  to  be  psychological,  and  so  without  our  province,  and  we  gladly  pass 
it  by. 


282  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

purpose.  Such  situations  yield  easily  to  attack  and  threaten 
none  of  those  dangers,  none  of  those  possible  occasions  for 
regret  or  remorse,  of  which  complex  situations  make  the  per- 
son of  developed  reflective  capacity  and  long  experience  so 
keenly  apprehensive.  They  are  disposed  of  with  compara- 
tively little  of  conscious  reconstruction  on  either  the  subject  or 
the  predicate  side,  and  when  a  conclusion  has  been  reached 
the  agent's  recognition  of  the  conditions  carries  with  it  the 
comfortable  though  too  often  delusive  assurance  of  the  com- 
plete and  perfect  eligibility  of  the  purpose.  If  the  question  of 
eligibility  is  raised  at  all,  the  answer  is  given  on  the  tacit  prin- 
ciple that  "  whatever  purpose  is,  is  right."  To  the  "plain 
man,"  and  to  all  of  us  on  certain  sides  of  our  lives,  every  pur- 
pose for  which  the  requisite  means  and  factual  conditions  are 
found  to  be  at  hand  is,  just  as  our  purpose,  therefore  right. 
The  same  experience  of  failure  and  disappointment  which 
proves  our  purpose  to  have  been,  from  the  standpoint  of 
enlargement  and  enrichment  of  the  self,  a  mistaken  one 
brings  a  clearer  consciousness  of  the  logic  implicit  in  our 
first  confident  belief  in  the  purpose,  and  at  the  same  time 
emphasizes  the  need  of  making  this  logic  explicit.  The  pur- 
pose, as  warranted  to  us  by  the  conditions  and  assembled 
means  that  Jay  before  us,  was  our  own,  and  as  our  own  was 
implicitly  a  purpose  of  furtherance  of  the  self.  The  disap- 
pointment that  has  come  brings  this  implication  more  clearly 
into  view,  and  likewise  the  need  of  methodical  procedure, 
not  as  before  in  the  determination  of  conditions,  but  in  the 
determination  of  purposes  as  such;  for  the  essence  of  the 
situation  is  that  the  execution  of  the  purpose  has  brought  to 
light  some  unforeseen  consequence  now  recognized  as  having 
been  all  the  while  in  the  nature  of  things  involved  in  the 
purpose.  This  consequence  or  group  of  consequences  con- 
sists (in  general  terms)  in  the  abatement  or  arrest  of  desir- 
able modes  of  activity  which  find  their  motivation  elsewhere 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PBOCESS  283 

in  the  agent's  system  of  accepted  ends,  and  it  is  registered 
in  consciousness  in  that  sense  of  restriction  or  repression 
from  without  which  is  a  notable  phase  of  all  emotional  experi- 
ence, particularly  in  its  early  stages.  The  consequences  are 
as  undesirable  as  they  are  unexpected,  and  the  reaction  against 
them,  at  first  emotional,  presently  passes  over  into  the  form 
of  a  reflective  interpretation  of  the  situation  to  the  effect  that 
the  self  has  suffered  a  loss  by  reason  of  its  thoughtless  haste 
in  identifying  itself  with  so  unsafe  a  purpose.1 

It  is  the  essential  logical  function  of  the  consciousness  of 
self  to  stimulate  the  valuation  processes  which  take  their  rise 
in  the  stage  of  reflective  thought  thus  attained.  The  con- 
sciousness of  self  is  a  peculiarly  baffling  theme  for  discussion 
from  whatever  point  of  view,  because  one  finds  its  meaning 
shifting  constantly  between  the  two  extremes  of  a  subjec- 
tivity to  which  "all  objects  of  all  thought"  are  external  and 
an  objective  thing  or  system  of  energies  which  is  known  just 
as  other  things  are — known  in  a  sense  by  itself,  to  be  sure, 
but  known  nevertheless,  and  thought  of  as  an  object  standing 
in  possible  relations  to  other  objects.  Now,  it  is  of  the 
subjective  self  that  we  are  speaking  when  we  say  that  its 
essential  function  is  the  stimulation  or  incitement  of  the 
valuation  processes,  but  manifestly  in  order  to  serve  thus  it 
must  nevertheless  be  presented  in  some  sort  of  sensuous 
imagery.  The  subjective  self  may,  in  fact,  be  thought  of  in 
many  ways — presented  in  many  different  sorts  of  imagery — 
but  in  all  its  forms  it  must  be  distinguished  carefully  from 

i  We  can,  of  course,  undertake  no  minute  analysis  of  the  psychological  mechan- 
ism or  concatenation  of  the  process  here  sketched  in  barest  outline.  Our  present 
purpose  is  wholly  that  of  description.  Slight  as  our  account  of  the  process  of  transi- 
tion is,  we  give  it  space  only  because  it  seems  necessary  to  do  so  in  order  to  make 
intelligible  the  accounts  yet  to  be  given  of  the  conscious  valuation  processes  for 
which  the  movement  here  described  prepares  the  way. 

It  will  be  observed  that  we  assume  above  that  the  purpose  is  successful  at 
planned  and  by  succeeding  brings  about  the  undesirable  results.  Failure  in  execu. 
tion  of  the  purpose  as  such  could  only,  in  the  manner  already  outlined,  prompt  a 
more  adequate  investigation  of  the  factual  conditions. 


284  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

that  objective  self  which,  as  described  in  psychology,  is  the 
assemblage  of  conditions  under  which  the  subjective  or 
"energetic"  self  works  out  its  purposes.  It  may  be  the 
pale,  attenuated  double  of  the  body,  or  a  personal  being 
standing  in  need  of  deliverance  from  sin,  or  an  atom  of 
soul-substance,  or,  in  our  present  terminology,  a  center  of 
developing  and  unfolding  energy.  The  significant  fact  is 
that,  however  different  in  content  and  in  motive  these  various 
presentations  of  the  subjective  self  may  be,  they  are,  one  and 
all,  as  presentations  and  as  in  so  far  objective,  stimuli  to 
some  definite  response.  The  savage  warrior  deposits  his 
double  in  a  tree  or  stone  for  safety  while  he  goes  into  battle ; 
the  self  that  is  to  be  saved  from  sin  is  a  self  that  prompts 
certain  acceptable  acts  in  satisfaction  of  the  quasi-legal  obli- 
gations that  the  fact  of  sin  has  laid  upon  the  agent.  The 
presented  self,  whatever  the  form  it  may  assume  as  presen- 
tation, has  its  function,  and  this  function  is  in  general  that 
of  stimulus  to  the  conservation  and  increase,  in  some  sense, 
of  the  self  that  is  not  presented,  but  for  whom  the  presen- 
tation is.  Now  our  own  present  description  of  the  self  as 
"energetic,"  as  a  center  or  source  of  developing  and  unfold- 
ing energy  is  in  its  way  a  presentation.  It  consists  of 
sensuous  imagery  and  suggests  a  mechanical  process,  or  the 
growth  of  a  plant  perhaps,  which  if  properly  safeguarded 
will  go  on  satisfactorily — a  process  which  one  must  not 
allow  to  be  perturbed  or  hindered  by  external  resistance  or 
internal  friction  or  to  run  down.  To  many  persons  doubt- 
less such  an  account  would  seem  arbitrary  and  fantastic  in 
the  extreme,  but  no  great  importance  need  be  attached  to 
its  details.  The  kind  and  number  and  sensuous  vividness 
of  the  details  in  which  this  essential  content  of  presentation 
may  be  clothed  must  of  course  depend,  for  each  person,  upon 
his  psychical  idiosyncrasy. 

Indeed,  as  the  habit  of  reflection  upon  purposes  comes 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  285 

to  be  more  firmly  fixed,  and  the  procedure  of  valuation  to  be 
consciously  methodical  and  orderly,  the  sensuous  content  of 
the  presented  self  must  grow  constantly  more  and  more 
attenuated  until  it  has  declined  into  a  mere  unexpressed 
principle  or  maxim  or  tacit  presumption,  prescribing  the  free 
and  impartial  application  of  the  method  of  valuation  to 
particular  practical  emergencies  as  these  arise.  For  a  self, 
consisting  of  presented  content  of  whatever  sort,  which  one 
seeks  to  further  through  attentive  deliberation  upon  con- 
crete purposes,  must,  just  in  so  far  as  it  has  content,  deter- 
mine the  outcome  of  ethical  judgment  in  definite  ways. 
Thus  the  soul  that  must  be  saved  from  sin  (if  this  be  the 
content  of  the  presented  self)  is  one  that  has  transgressed 
the  law  in  certain  ways  and  the  right  relations  that  should 
subsist  between  creature  and  Creator,  and  has  thereby 
incurred  a  more  or  less  technically  definable  guilt.  This 
guilt  can  only  be  removed  and  the  self  rehabilitated  in  its 
normal  relations  to  the  law  by  an  appropriate  response  to  the 
situation — by  a  choice  on  the  agent's  part,  first,  of  a  certain 
technical  procedure  of  repentance,  and  then  of  a  settled 
purpose  of  living  as  the  law  prescribes.1  So  also  our  own 
image  of  the  self  as  "energetic"  after  the  manner  of  a 
growing  organism  may  well  seem,  if  taken  too  seriously  as 
to  its  presentational  details,  to  foster  a  bias  in  favor  of  over- 
conservative  adherence  to  the  established  and  the  accredited 
as  such.2 

The  argument  of  the  last  few  paragraphs  may  be  restated 

1  The  case  is  not  essentially  altered  in  logical  character  if  for  the  Levitical  law 
be  substituted  the  general  principles  of  the  new  dispensation  read  off  into  details 
by  an  authoritative  church  or  by  "  private  judgment." 

2  A  remark  may  be  added  here  byway  of  caution.    The  presented  self,  we  have 
said,  attenuates  to  a  mere  maxim  or  tacit  presumption  in  favor  of  a  certain  type  of 
logical  procedure  in  dealing  with  the  situation.    It  must  be  remembered  that  the 
presented  self,  like  all  other  presentation,  is  and  comes  to  be  for  the  sake  of  its 
function  in  experience,  and  so  is  practical  from  the  start.    The  process  sketched 
above  is  therefore  not  from  bare  presented  content  as  such  to  a  methodological 
presumption,  which,  as  methodological  and  not  contentual,  is  qualitatively  dif- 
ferent from  what  preceded  it. 


286  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

in  the  following  way  in  terms  of  the  evolution  of  the  indi- 
vidual's moral  attitude  or  technique  of  self-control: 

1.  In  the  stage  of  moral  evolution  in  which  custom  and 
authority  are  the  controlling  principles  of  conduct,  moral 
judgment  in  the  proper  sense  of  self-conscious,  critical,  and 
reconstructive  valuation  of  purposes  is  wanting.    Such  judg- 
ment as  finds  here  a  place  is  at  best  of  the  merely  casuistical 
type,  looking  to  a  determination  of  particular  cases  as  falling 
within  the  scope  of  fixed  and  definite  concepts.     There  is  no 
self -consciousness  except  such  as  may  be  mediated  by  the 
sentiment  of  willing  obedience.     It  is,  at  this  stage,  not  the 
particular  sort  of  conduct  which  the  law  prescribes  that  in 
the  agent's  apprehension  enlarges  and  develops  the  self;  so 
far  as  any  thought  of  enlargement  and  development  of  the 
self  plays  a  part  in  influencing  conduct,  these  effects  are  such 
as,  in  the  agent's  trusting  faith,  will  come  from  an  entire  and 
willing  acceptance  of  the  law  as  such.     "If  any  man  will  do 
His  will,  he  shall  know  of  the  doctrine."    Moreover,  the  stage 
of  custom  and  authority  goes  along  with,  in  social  evolution, 
either  very  simple  social  conditions  or  else  conditions  which, 
though  very  complex,  are  stable,  so  that  in  either  case  the 
conditions  of  conduct  are  in  general  in  harmony  with  the 
conduct  which  custom  and  authority  prescribe.     The  law, 
therefore,  can  be  absolute  and  takes  no  account  of  possible 
inability  to  obey.     The  divine  justice  punishes  infraction  of 
the  law  simply  as  objective  infraction ;  not  as  sin,  in  propor- 
tion to  the  sinner's  responsibility. 

2.  But  inevitably  custom  and  authority  come  to  be  inade- 
quate.    As  social  conditions  change,  custom  becomes  anti- 
quated and  authority  blunders,  wavers,  contradicts  itself  in 
the  endeavor  to  prescribe  suitable  modes  of  individual  con- 
duct.    Obedience  no  longer  is  the  way  to  light.     The  self 
becomes  self-conscious  through  feeling  more  and  more  the 
repression  and  the  misdirection  of  its  energies  that  obedi- 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  287 

ence  now  involves.  This  is  the  stage  of  subjective  morality 
or  conscience;  and  the  rise  of  conscience,  the  attitude  of 
appeal  to  conscience,  means  the  beginning  of  endeavor  at 
methodical  solution  of  those  new  problematic  situations  in  the 
attempt  to  deal  with  which  authority  as  such  has  palpably 
collapsed.  We  say,  however,  that  conscience  is  the  begin- 
ning of  this  endeavor ;  for  conscience  is,  in  fact,  an  ambigu- 
ous and  essentially  transitional  phenomenon.  On  the  one 
hand  conscience  is  the  inner  nature  of  a  man  speaking 
within  him,  and  so  the  self  furthers  its  own  growth  in  listen- 
ing to  this  expression  of  itself.  In  this  aspect  conscience  is 
methodological.  But  on  the  other  hand  conscience  speaks, 
and,  speaking,  must  say  something  determinate,  however 
general  this  something  may  be.  In  this  aspect  conscience  is 
a  resume  of  the  generic  values  realized  under  the  system  of 
custom  and  authority,  but  to  the  present  continued  attainment 
of  which  the  particular  prescriptions  of  custom  and  author- 
ity are  no  longer  adequate  guides.  Conscience  is  thus  at 
once  an  inward  prompting  to  the  application  of  logical 
method  to  the  case  in  hand  and  a  body  of  general  or  specific 
rules  under  some  one  of  which  the  case  can  be  subsumed. 
In  ethical  theory  we  accordingly  find  no  unanimity  as  to  the 
nature  of  conscience.  At  the  one  extreme  it  is  the  voice  of 
God  speaking  in  us  or  through  us,  in  detailed  and  specific 
terms — and  so,  virtually,  custom  and  authority  in  disguise. 
At  the  other  it  is  an  empty  abstract  intuition  that  the  right 
is  binding  upon  us — and,  so,  simply  the  hypostasis  of 
demand  for  a  logical  procedure.  The  history  of  ethics 
presents  us  with  all  possible  intermediate  conceptions  in 
which  these  extreme  motives  are  more  or  less  skilfully  inter- 
woven or  combined  in  varying  proportions.  The  truth  is 
that  conscience  is  essentially  a  transitional  conception,  and 
so  necessarily  looks  before  and  after.  In  one  of  its  aspects 
it  is  a  self  which  has  come  to  miss  (and  therefore  to  image 


288  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

for  itself)  the  values  and,  it  may  be,  a  certain  dawning  sense 
of  vitality  and  growth  which  obedience  to  authority  once 
afforded.1  In  its  other  aspect  it  is  a  self  that  is  looking  for- 
ward in  a  self-reliant  way  to  the  determination  on  its  own 
account  of  its  purposes  and  values.  And  finally,  as  for  the 
environing  world  of  means  and  conditions,  clearly  this  is  not 
necessarily  harmonious  with  and  amenable  to  conscience; 
indeed,  in  the  nature  of  things  it  can  be  only  partially  so. 
The  morality  of  conscience  is,  therefore,  either  mystical,  a 
morality  that  seeks  to  escape  the  world  in  the  very  moment 
of  its  affirmation  that  the  world  is  unreal  (because  worthless), 
or  else  it  takes  refuge  in  a  virtual  distinction  between  "abso- 
lute" and  "relative"  morality  (to  borrow  a  terminology  from 
a  system  in  which  properly  it  should  have  no  place),  perhaps 
setting  up  as  an  intermediary  between  heaven  and  earth  a 
machinery  of  special  dispensation.2 

3.  Conscience  professes  in  general,  that  is,  to  be  autono- 
mous, and  the  profession  is,  strictly  speaking,  a  contradiction 
in  terms.  Moreover,  apart  from  considerations  of  the  logic 
of  the  situation,  theories  of  conscience  have,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  always  lent  themselves  kindly  to  theological  purposes 
just  as  the  theory  of  self-realization  in  its  classic  modern 
statement  Yests  upon  a  metaphysical  doctrine  of  the  Abso- 
lute.3 Inevitably  the  movement  concealed  within  this  essen- 
tially unstable  conception  must  have  its  legitimate  outcome 
(1)  in  a  clearing  of  the  presented  self  of  its  fixed  elements 
of  content,  thus  setting  it  free  in  its  character  of  a  non- 
presentational  principle  of  valuation,  and  (2)  a  setting  apart 
of  these  elements  of  content  from  the  principle  of  valuation 

1  Recognized  authority  is,   of  course,  not  the  same    thing  by  any  means  as 
authority  unrecognized  because  absolutely  dominant. 

2  We  may  be  pardoned  for  supplying  from  the  history  of  ethics  no  illustrations 
of  this  slight  sketch. 

3  In  fact,  as  suggested  above,  the  Prolegomena  to  Ethics  is  in  many  respects 
essentially  intuitional  in  spirit,  though  its  intuitionism  is  of  a  modern  discreetly 
attenuated  sort. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  289 

as  standards  for  reference  and  consultation  rather  than  as 
law  to  be  obeyed. 

We  have  thus  correlated  our  account  of  the  logic  whereby 
the  "energetic"  self  comes  to  explicit  recognition  as  stimu- 
lus to  the  valuation-process  with  the  three  main  stages  in  the 
moral  evolution  of  the  individual  and  the  race.  We  were 
brought  to  this  first-mentioned  part  of  our  discussion  by  our 
endeavor  to  find  out  the  factors  involved  in  the  first  accept- 
ance of  a  conscious  purpose  (or,  indifferently,  the  subsequent 
recognition  of  it  as  a  standard)  —  an  endeavor  prompted  by 
the  need  of  distinguishing,  with  a  view  to  their  special 
analysis,  the  two  types  of  valuation -process.  We  now  return 
to  this  problem. 

The  following  illustration  will  serve  our  present  undertak- 
ing: A  lawyer  or  man  of  business  is  struck  by  the  great 
need  of  honest  men  in  public  office,  or  has  had  his  attention 
in  some  impressive  way  called  to  the  fact  of  great  inequality 
in  the  present  distribution  of  wealth,  and  to"  the  diverse  evils 
resulting  therefrom.  These  facts  hold  his  attention,  perhaps 
against  his  will,  and  at  last  suggest  the  thought  of  his  mak- 
ing some  personal  endeavor  toward  improvement  of  condi- 
tions, political  or  social,  as  the  case  may  be.  On  the  other 
hand,  however,  the  man  has  before  him  the  promise  of  a 
successful  or  even  brilliant  career  in  his  chosen  occupation, 
and  is  already  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  substantial  income,  which 
is  rapidly  increasing.  Moreover,  he  has  a  family  growing 
up  about  him,  and  he  is  not  simply  strongly  interested  in  the 
early  training  and  development  of  his  children,  and  desirous 
of  having  himself  some  share  in  conducting  it,  but  he  sees 
that  the  suitable  higher  education  of  his  children  will  in  a 
few  years  make  heavy  demands  upon  his  pecuniary  means. 
Here,  then,  we  have  a  situation  the  analysis  of  which  will 
enable  us  to  distinguish  and  define  the  provinces  of  ethical 
and  economic  judgment. 


290  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

It  is  easy  to  see  that  we  have  here  a  conflict  between 
ends.  On  the  one  side  is  the  thought  of  public  service  in 
some  important  office  or,  let  us  say,  the  thought  of  bettering 
society  in  a  more  fundamental  way  by  joining  the  propa- 
ganda of  some  proposed  social  reform.  This  end  rests  upon 
certain  social  impulses  in  the  man's  nature  and  appeals  to 
him  as  strongly,  we  may  fairly  assume,  as  would  any  pur- 
pose of  immediate  self-interest  or  self-indulgence,  so  that  it 
stands  before  him  and  urges  him  with  an  insistent  pertinacity 
that  at  first  even  puts  him  on  his  guard  against  it  as  a 
temptation.  Over  against  this  concrete  end  or  subject  of 
moral  valuation  stand  other  ends  comprehended  or  symbol- 
ized in  the  ideals  of  regular  and  steady  industry,  of  material 
provision  for  family,  of  paternal  duty  toward  children,  of 
scholarly  achievement  as  lawyer  or  judge,  and  the  like — 
ideals  which  are  indeed  practical  and  personal,  but  which,  as 
they  now  function,  are  general  or  universal  in  character, 
are  lacking  in  the  concreteness  and  emotional  quality  which 
belong  to  the  new  purpose  which  has  just  come  to  imagina- 
tion and  has  brought  these  ideals  into  action  on  the  predicate 
side.  Will  this  life  of  social  agitation  really  be  quite 
"respectable,"  and  befitting  the  character  of  a  sober  and 
industrious  man  ?  Will  it  enable  me  to  support  and  educate 
my  children  ?  Will  it  permit  me  to  devote  sufficient  attention 
to  their  present  care  and  training  ?  And  will  it  not  so  warp 
my  nature,  so  narrow  and  concentrate  my  interests,  as  in  a 
measure  to  disqualify  me  for  the  right  exercise  of  paternal 
authority  over  them  in  years  to  come  ?  Moreover,  will  not  a 
life  of  agitation,  of  constant  intercourse  with  minds  and 
natures  in  many  ways  inferior  to  my  own  and  those  of  my 
present  professional  associates,  lower  my  intellectual  and 
moral  standards,  and  so  make  of  me  in  the  end  a  less  useful 
member  of  society  than  I  am  at  present  ?  These  and  other 
questions  like  them  present  the  issue  in  its  earlier  aspect. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PEOCESS  291 

Presently,  however,  the  tentative  purpose  puts  in  its  defense, 
appealing  to  yet  other  recognized  ideals  or  standards  of  self- 
sacrifice,  benevolence,  or  social  justice  as  witnesses  in  its 
favor.  The  conflict  thus  takes  on  the  subject-predicate  form, 
as  has  already  been  explained.  On  the  one  hand  we  have 
the  undefined  but  strongly  insistent  concrete  purpose;  on 
the  other  hand  we  have  a  number  of  symbolic  concepts  or  uni- 
versals  standing  for  accepted  and  accredited  habitual  modes 
of  conduct.  The  problem  is  that  of  working  the  two  sides 
of  the  situation  together  into  a  unified  and  harmonious  plan 
of  conduct  which  shall  be  at  once  concrete  and  particular, 
as  a  plan  chosen  by  way  of  solution  of  a  given  present 
emergency,  and  universal,  as  having  due  regard  for  past 
modes  of  conduct,  and  as  itself  worthy  of  consideration  in 
coping  with  future  emergencies. 

Now,  how  shall  we  discriminate  the  ethical  and  the  eco- 
nomic aspects  of  the  situation  which  we  have  described? 
We  shall  most  satisfactorily  do  this  through  a  consideration 
of  the  various  sorts  of  conditions  and  means  of  which  account 
must  be  taken  in  working  the  situation  through  to  a  solution, 
or  (to  express  it  more  accurately)  the  various  sorts  of  con- 
ditions and  means  which  need  to  be  defined  over  against  the 
purpose  as  the  purpose  gradually  develops  into  detailed  form. 

We  may  say,  first  of  all,  that  there  are  psychological 
conditions  which  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in  the 
case  before  us.  Our  thesis  is  that  in  so  far  as  a  situation  gives 
rise  to  the  determination  of  psychological  conditions  and  is 
advanced  along  the  way  toward  final  solution  through  deter- 
mination of  these,  the  situation  is  an  ethical  one.  In  other 
words,  we  hold  that  the  ends  at  issue  in  the  situation  are 
"related"  in  so  far  as  they  depend  upon  the  same  set  of  psycho- 
logical conditions.  In  so  far  as  these  statements  are  not  true 
of  the  situation  there  must  be  a  resort  to  economic  judgment. 

By  the  general  questions  suggested  above  as  presenting 


292  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

themselves  to  the  agent  we  have  indicated  in  what  way  the 
course  of  action  taken  must  have  regard  to  certain  psycho- 
logical considerations.  Entering  upon  the  new  way  of  life 
will  inevitably  lessen  the  agent's  interest  in  his  present 
professional  pursuits  and  so  make  difficult,  and  in  the  end 
even  irksome,  any  attempt  at  continuing  in  them  either  as  a 
partial  means  of  livelihood  or  as  a  recreation.  The  new  work 
will  be  absorbing — as  indeed  it  must  be  if  it  is  to  be  worth 
while.  In  the  same  way  the  man  must  recognize  that  his 
nature  is  not  one  of  the  rare  ones  so  richly  endowed  in 
capacity  for  sympathy  that  constant  familiarity  with  general 
conditions  of  misery  and  suffering  does  not  dull  their  fine- 
ness of  sensibility  to  the  special  concerns  and  interests  of 
particular  individuals.  If  he  takes  his  suffering  fellow-men 
at  large  for  his  children,  his  own  children  will  probably 
suffer  just  in  so  far  the  loss  of  a  father's  special  sympathy 
and  understanding  care.  And  likewise  he  must  be  drawn 
away  and  isolated  from  his  friends,  for  it  will  be  hard  for 
him,  he  must  foresee,  to  hold  free  and  intimate  converse  with 
men  whose  ways  of  thinking  lie  apart  from  his  own  con- 
trolling interest  and  for  whose  insensibility  to  the  things 
that  move  him  so  profoundly  he  must  come  more  and  more 
to  feel  a  certain  impatience  if  not  contempt.  Not  to  enlarge 
upon  these  possibilities  and  others  of  like  nature,  we  must 
see  that  reflection  upon  the  situation  must  presently  bring 
to  consciousness  these  various  consequences  of  the  kind  of 
action  which  is  proposed  and  a  recognition  that  the  ground 
of  relation  between  them  and  the  action  proposed  lies  in 
certain  qualities  and  limitations  of  his  own  nature.  These 
latter  are  for  him  the  general  psychological  conditions  of 
action,  his  "empirical  self,"  the  general  nature  of  which  he 
has  doubtless  already  come  to  be  familiar  with  in  many 
former  situations  perhaps  wholly  different  in  superficial 
aspect  from  from  the  present  one. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  293 

Now,  just  in  so  far  as  there  is  this  relation  of  mutual 
exclusiveness  between  the  end  proposed  and  certain  of  the 
standard  ends  or  modes  of  conduct  which  are  involved,  judg- 
ment will  be  by  the  direct  or  ethical  method  of  adjustment 
presently  to  be  described.  Let  us  assume  accordingly  that 
a  tentative  solution  of  the  problem  has  been  reached  to 
the  effect  that  a  portion  of  the  lawyer's  time  shall  be  given 
to  his  profession  and  to  his  family  life,  and  that  the  remain- 
der shall  be  given  to  a  moderate  participation  in  the  social 
propaganda.  Over  against  this  tentative  ethical  solution,  as 
its  warrant  in  the  sense  explained  above,  will  stand  in  the 
survey  of  the  situation  that  may  now  be  taken  a  certain 
fairly  definite  disposition  or  Anlage  of  the  capacities  and 
functions  of  the  empirical  self.1  Now  on  the  basis  of  the 
ethical  solution  thus  reached  there  will  be  further  study  of 
the  situation,  perhaps  as  a  result  of  failure  in  the  attempt  to 
carry  the  solution  into  practice,  but  more  probably  as  a 
further  preparation  for  overt  action.  Forthwith  it  develops 
that  the  compromise  proposed  will  be  impossible.  Participa- 
tion in  the  social  agitation  will  excite  hostility  on  the  part 
of  the  classes  from  which  possible  clients  would  come  and 
will  cause  distrust  and  a  suspicion  of  inattention  to  details 
of  business  among  the  lawyer's  present  clientage.  There 
are,  in  a  word,  a  whole  assemblage  of  "external"  sociological 
conditions  (and  we  need  not  stop  to  speak  of  physical 
conditions  which  co-operate  with  these  and  contribute  to 
their  effect)  which  effectually  veto  the  plan  proposed.  In 
general  these  external  conditions  are  such  as  to  deprive  the 
agent  of  the  means  of  living  in  the  manner  which  the  ethical 
determination  of  the  end  proposes.  In  the  present  case, 
unless  some  other  more  feasible  compromise  can  be  devised, 
either  the  one  extreme  or  the  other  must  be  chosen — either 
continuance  in  the  profession  and  the  corresponding  general 

i  This  would  appear  to  be  the  logical  value  of  functional  psychology  as  a  science 
of  mental  process. 


294  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

scheme  of  life  or  the  social  propaganda  and  reliance  upon 
such  scant  and  precarious  income  as  it  may  incidentally 
afford. 

We  can  now  define  the  economic  aspect  of  a  situation  in 
terms  of  our  present  illustration.  The  end  which  the  lawyer 
had  in  view  in  a  vague  and  tentative  way  was,  as  we  saw, 
defined  with  reference  to  his  ethical  standards — that  is  to 
say,  a  certain  measure  of  participation  in  the  new  work  was 
determined  as  satisfactory  at  once  to  his  ideals  of  devotion 
to  the  cause  of  social  justice  and  to  his  sense  of  obligation  to 
himself  and  to  his  family.  In  this  sense,  logically  speaking, 
a  subject  was  defined  to  which  a  system  of  predicates,  com- 
prehended perhaps  under  the  general  predicate  of  right  or 
good,  applies.  Now,  however,  it  appears,  from  the  inspection 
of  the  material  and  social  environment,  that  the  execution  of 
this  purpose,  perfectly  in  accord  though  it  may  be  with  the 
spiritual  capacities  and  powers  of  the  agent,  is  possible  only 
on  pain  of  certain  other  consequences,  certain  other  sacri- 
fices, which  have  not  hitherto  been  considered.  That  a 
half-hearted  interest  in  his  profession  would  still  not  prevent 
his  earning  a  moderate  income  from  it  was  never  questioned 
in  the  ethical  "first  approximation"  to  a  final  decision,  but 
now  the  issue  is  fairly  presented,  and,  as  we  must  see,  in  a 
very  difficult  and  distressing  way;  for  the  essence  of  the 
situation  is  that  the  ends  now  in  conflict,  that  of  earning  a 
living  and  caring  for  his  family  and  that  of  laboring  for  the 
social  good,  are  not  intrinsically  (that  is,  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  empirical  self)  incompatible.  On  the  contrary, 
these  two  ends  are  psychologically  quite  compatible,  as  the 
outcome  of  the  ethical  judgment  shows;  only  the  "external" 
conditions  oppose  them  to  each  other.  The  difficulty  of  the 
case  lies,  then,  just  in  the  fact  that  the  conflicting  ends,  both 
standing,  as  they  do,  for  strong  personal  interests  of  the  self, 
nevertheless  cannot  be  brought  to  an  adjustment  by  the 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PKOCESS  295 

direct  method  of  an  appportionment  between  them  of  the 
"spiritual  resources"  or  "energies"  of  the  self.  Instead, 
the  case  is  one  calling  for  an  apportionment  of  the  external 
means,  and  so,  proximately,  not  for  immediate  determination 
of  the  final  end,  but  for  economic  determination  of  the  means. 

We  come  now  to  the  task  of  describing,  so  far  as  this 
may  be  possible,  the  judgment  or  valuation-processes  which 
correspond  to  the  types  of  situation  thus  distinguished.  We 
are  able  now  to  see  that  these  must  be  constructive  processes, 
in  the  sense  that  in  and  through  them  courses  of  conduct 
adapted  to  unique  situations  are  shaped  by  the  concourse  of 
established  standards  with  a  new  end  which  has  arisen  and 
put  in  its  claim  for  recognition.  We  can  see,  moreover,  that 
these  valuation- processes  effect  a  construction  of  a  different 
order  from  that  given  in  factual  judgment.  Factual  judg- 
ment determines  external  objects  as  means  or  conditions 
of  action  from  standpoints  suggested  by  the  analysis  and 
development  of  ends.  Judgments  of  valuation  determine 
concrete  purposes  from  standpoints  given  in  recognized 
general  purposes  of  the  self — purposes  which  are  general  in 
virtue  of  their  having  been  taken  by  abstraction  from  con- 
crete cases,  in  which  they  have  received  particular  formula- 
tion as  purposes,  and  set  apart  as  typical  modes  of  conduct 
in  general  serviceable  to  the  "energetic"  self.1  Logically 
factual  judgment  is  at  all  times  subordinate  to  valuational; 
when  valuational  judgment  has  become  consciously  deliber- 
ate, this  logical  subordination  becomes  explicit  and  factual 
judgment  appears  in  its  true  character.  Its  essential  func- 
tion is  that  of  presenting  the  conditions  which  sanction  and 
stimulate  our  ethically  and  economically  determined  pur- 
poses.2 Finally,  in  the  construction  of  purposes  and  recon- 

1  We  have  already  given  a  slight  sketch  of  the  historical  process  here  character- 
ized in  the  barest  logical  terms. 

2  Further  consideration  of  the  problem  of  factual  judgment  must  be  deferred  to 
Part  V. 


296  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

struction  of  standards  in  valuation  the  ideal  of  the  expansion 
and  development  of  the  "energetic"  self  controls  —  not  as  a 
"presented"  or  contentual  self  prescribing  particular  modes 
of  conduct,  but  as  a  principle  prescribing  the  greatest  possible 
openness  to  suggestion  and  an  impartial  application  of  the 
method  of  valuation  to  the  case  in  hand.  As  we  have  said, 
in  whatever  sensuous  image  we  figure  the  "energetic"  self, 
its  essential  character  lies  in  its  function  of  stimulating 
methodical  valuation.  In  place  of  the  two-faced  and  ambigu- 
ous "presented"  self,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  stage 
of  conscience,  we  now  have  in  the  stage  of  valuation  the 
"energetic"  self  on  the  one  hand  and  standards  on  the  other.1 
We  have  now  to  consider  the  actual  procedure  of  valua- 
tion, and  first  the  ethical  form  as  above  defined.  Bearing 
in  mind  that  we  are  not  concerned  with  cases  of  obedience 
to  authority  or  deference  to  conscience,  let  us  take  a  case  of 
genuine  moral  conflict  such  as  we  were  considering  some 
time  since.  Suppose  that  one  has  the  impulse  to  indulge  in 
some  form  of  amusement  which  he  has  been  in  the  habit  of 
considering  frivolous  or  absolutely  wrong.  The  end,  as  soon 
as  imaged,  or  rather  as  the  condition  of  its  being  imaged, 
encounters  past  habits  of  conduct  symbolized  by  standards  — 
standards  which  may  be  presented  under  a  variety  of  forms, 
a  maxim  learned  in  early  childhood,  the  ideal  of  a  Stoic 
sage  or  Christian  saint,  the  example  of  some  friend,  or  a  pre- 
cept put  in  abstract  terms,  but  which,  however  presented, 
are  essentially  symbolic  of  established  habits  of  thought  or 
action.2  Solution  of  such  a  problem  proceeds,  in  general, 
along  two  closely  interwoven  lines:  (1)  collation  and  com- 
parison of  cases  recognized  as  conforming  to  the  standard, 

1  The  relation  of  the  empirical  self  to  the  "energetic"  and  to  standards  will 
come  in  for  statement  in  Part  V  in  the  connection  just  referred  to. 

2  It  might  be  possible  to  construct  a  "  logic  "  of  these  various  types  of  working 
moral  standard  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  in  each  type  there  is  implied  the  one 
next  higher  morphologically,  and  ultimately  the  highest  — that  is,  some  sort  of  con- 
cept of  the  "  energetic  "  self. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  297 

with  a  view  to  determining  the  standard  type  of  conduct  in 
a  less  ambiguous  way,  and  (2)  definition  of  the  relations 
between  this  type  of  conduct  and  other  recognized  types  in 
the  catalogue  of  virtues. 

Now,  these  two  movements  are  in  fact  inseparable,  for, 
without  reference  to  the  entire  system  of  virtues  of  which 
the  one  now  asserting  itself  is  a  member,  the  comparison  of 
cases  with  a  view  to  definition  of  the  virtue  would  be  blind 
and  hopeless  of  any  outcome.  The  agent  in  the  case  before 
us  desires  to  be  temperate  in  amusement  and  to  make  profit- 
able use  of  leisure  time,  but  after  all  he  may  wonder  whether 
these  ideals  really  require  the  austerities  of  certain  mediaeval 
saints  or  the  Stoic  ataraxy.  The  saint's  feats  of  spiritual 
athletics  may  have  served  a  useful  purpose,  in  ruder  times, 
as  evidence  of  human  power  to  lead  a  virtuous  and  thought- 
ful life,  but  can  such  self-denial  now  be  required  of  the 
moral  man?  It  is  apparent,  in  short,  that  the  superficially 
conceived  ideal  must  be  analyzed.  We  must  consider  the 
"spirit"  of  our  saint  or  hero,  not  the  letter  of  his  conduct, 
as  we  say,  and  in  interpreting  it  make  due  allowance  for  the 
conditions  of  the  time  in  which  he  lived  and  the  grade  of 
general  intelligence  of  those  he  sought  to  edify.  Whether 
our  standard  is  a  person  or  a  parable  or  an  abstractly  formu- 
lated precept,  the  logic  of  the  situation  is  the  same  in  every 
case  of  judgment.  The  analysis  of  a  standard  cannot  pro- 
ceed without  the  "synthesis"  or  co-ordination  of  the  type  of 
conduct  thereby  defined  with  other  distinguishable  recog- 
nized types  of  conduct  into  a  comprehensive  ideal  of  life  as 
a  whole.  In  the  last  resort  the  implicit  relations  of  all  the 
virtues  will  be  made  explicit  in  the  process  of  defining  accu- 
rately any  one  of  them. 

In  the  last  resort,  then,  the  predicate  of  the  ethical  judg- 
ment is  the  whole  system  of  the  recognized  habits  of  the 
agent,  and  each  judgment -process  is  in  its  outcome  a  read- 


298  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

justment  of  the  system  to  accommodate  the  new  habit  that 
has  been  seeking  admission.  Both  the  old  habits  and  the 
new  impulse  have  been  modified  in  the  process  just  as  the 
intension  of  a  class  term  and  the  particular  "subsumed" 
under  the  class  are  reciprocally  modified  in  the  ordinary  judg- 
ment of  sense-perception.  We  are  once  more  able  to  see 
that  the  process  of  ethical  judgment  or  valuation  is  not  a  pro- 
cess of  subsumption  or  classification,  of  ascertaining  the  value 
of  particular  modes  of  conduct,  but  on  the  contrary  a  process 
of  determining  or  assigning  value.  Each  judgment  process 
means  a  new  and  more  or  less  thoroughgoing  redetermina- 
tion  of  the  self  and  hence  a  fixation  of  the  ethical  value  of 
the  conduct  whose  emergence  as  a  purpose  gave  rise  to  the 
process.  The  moral  experience  is  not  essentially  and  in  its 
typical  emergencies  a  recognition  of  values  with  a  view  to 
shaping  one's  course  accordingly,  but  rather  a  determining 
or  a  fixation  of  values  which  shall  serve  for  the  time  being, 
but  be  subject  at  all  times  to  re-appraisal. 

If  the  present  discussion  were  primarily  intended  as  a 
contribution  to  general  ethical  theory,  it  would  be  a  part  of 
our  purpose  to  show  in  detail  that  any  formulation  of  an 
ethical  ideal  in  contentual  "material"  terms  must  always  be 
inadequate  for  practical  purposes  and  hence  theoretically 
indefensible.  This,  as  we  believe,  could  be  shown  true  of  the 
popularly  current  ideal  of  self-realization  as  well  as  of  hedon- 
ism in  its  various  forms  and  the  older  systems  of  conscience 
or  the  moral  sense.  These  all  are  essentially  fixed  ideals 
admitting  of  more  or  less  complete  specification  in  point 
of  content  and  regarded  as  tests  or  canons  by  appeal  to 
which  the  moral  quality  of  any  concrete  act  can  be  deduct- 
ively ascertained.  They  are  the  ethical  analogues  of  such 
metaphysical  principles  as  the  Cartesian  God  or  the  Sub- 
stance of  Spinoza,  and  the  logic  implied  in  regarding  them 
as  adequate  standards  for  the  valuation  of  conduct  is  the 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  299 

logic  whereby  the  Rationalist  sought  to  deduce  from  con- 
cepts the  world  of  particular  things.  The  present  desidera- 
tum in  ethical  theory  would  appear  to  be,  not  further  attempts 
at  definition  of  a  moral  ideal  of  any  sort,  but  the  development 
of  a  logical  method  for  the  valuation  of  ideals  and  ends  in 
which  the  results  of  more  modern  researches  in  the  theory  of 
knowledge  should  be  made  use  of — in  which  the  concept  of 
self  should  play  the  part,  not  of  the  concept  of  Substance  in 
a  rationalistic  metaphysics,1  but  of  such  a  principle  as  that  of 
the  conservation  of  energy,  for  example,  in  scientific  infer- 
ence.2 

We  have,  then,  in  each  readjustment  of  the  activities  of 
the  self  a  reconstruction  in  knowledge  of  ethical  reality — a 
reconstruction  which  at  the  same  time  involves  the  assign- 
ment of  a  definite  value  to  the  new  mode  of  conduct  which 
has  been  worked  out  in  the  readjustment.  We  conclude,  then, 
that  the  ethical  experience  is  one  of  continuous  construction 
and  reconstruction  of  an  order  of  objective  reality,  within 
which  the  world  of  sense-perception  is  comprised  as  the  world 
of  more  or  less  refractory  means  to  the  attainment  of  ethical 
purposes.  In  this  process  of  construction  of  ethical  reality 
current  moral  standards  play  the  same  part  as  concepts 
already  defined — that  is  to  say,  the  agent's  present  habits — 

lit  matters  not  at  all  whether,  in  ethics  or  metaphysics,  our  universal  be 
abstract  or  on  the  other  hand  "concrete,"  like  Green's  conception  of  the  self,  or  a 
"  Hegelian  "  Absolute.  Its  logical  use  in  the  determination  of  particulars  must  be 
essentially  the  same  in  either  case. 

2  In  this  connection  reference  maybe  made  to  ME.  TAYLOR'S  recent  work,  The 
Problem  of  Conduct.  Mr.  Taylor  reduces  the  moral  life  to  terms  of  an  ultimate  con- 
flict between  the  ideals  of  egoism  and  social  justice,  holding  that  the  conflict  is  in 
theory  irreconcilable.  With  this  negative  attitude  toward  current  standards  in 
ethical  theory  one  may  well  be  in  accord  without  accepting  Mr.  Taylor's  further  con- 
tention that  a  theory  of  ethics  is  therefore  impossible.  Because  the  "  ethics  of  sub- 
sumption  "  is  demonstrably  futile  it  by  no  means  follows  that  a  method  of  ethics 
cannot  be  developed  along  the  lines  of  modern  scientific  logic  which  shall  be  as  valid 
as  the  procedure  of  the  investigator  in  the  sciences.  Mr.  Taylor's  logic  is  virtually 
the  same  as  that  of  the  ethical  theories  which  he  criticises ;  because  an  ethical  ideal 
is  impossible,  a  theory  of  ethics  is  impossible  also.  One  is  reminded  of  ME.  BEAD- 
LEY'S  criticism  of  knowledge  in  the  closing  chapters  of  the  Logic  as  an  interesting 
parallel. 


300  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

do  in  the  typical  judgment  of  sense-perception.  They  play 
the  part  of  symbols  suggestive  of  recognized  and  heretofore 
habitual  modes  of  action  with  reference  to  conduct  of  the 
type  of  the  particular  instance  that  is  under  consideration, 
serving  thus  to  bring  to  bear  upon  the  subject  of  the  judg- 
ment sooner  or  later  the  entire  moral  self.  The  outcome  is 
a  new  self,  and  so  for  the  future  a  new  standard,  in  which 
the  past  self  as  represented  by  the  former  standard  and  the 
new  impulse  have  been  brought  to  mutual  adjustment.  Our 
position  is  that  this  adjustment  is  essentially  experimental 
and  that  in  it  the  general  principle  of  the  unity  and  expan- 
sion of  the  self  must  be  presupposed,  as  in  inductive  infer- 
ence general  principles'  of  teleology,  of  the  conservation  of 
energy,  and  of  organic  interconnection  of  parts  in  living 
things  are  presupposed.  The  unity  and  increase  of  the  self 
is  not  a  test  or  canon,  but  a  principle  of  moral  experimenta- 
tion.1 

Finally,  we  must  note  one  further  parallel  between  ethical 
judgment  and  the  judgment  of  sense-perception  and  science. 
However  the  man  of  science  may,  as  a  nominalist,  regard 
the  laws  of  nature  as  mere  observed  uniformities  of  fact  and 
particulars  as  the  true  realities,  these  same  laws  will  never- 
theless on  occasion  have  a  distinctly  objective  character  in 
his  actual  apprehension  of  them.  The  stubbornness  with 
which  a  certain  material  may  refuse  to  lend  itself  to  a 
desired  purpose  will  commonly  be  reinforced,  as  a  matter  of 
apprehension,  by  one's  recognition  of  the  "scientific  neces- 
sity" of  the  phenomenon.  As  offering  resistance  the  thing 
itself,  as  we  have  seen,  becomes  objective;  so  also  does  the 
law  of  which  this  case  may  be  recognized  as  only  a  particu- 
lar example — and  the  other  type  of  objectivity  experience 
we  need  not  here  do  more  than  mention  as  likewise  possible 

i  MR.  BOSANQUET'S  discussion  of  the  place  of  the  principle  of  teleology  in  ana- 
logical inference  will  be  found  suggestive  in  this  connection  (Logic,  Vol.  II, 
chap.  iii). 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  301 

in  one's  apprehension  of  the  law  as  well  as  of  the  "facts" 
of  nature.  Both  types  of  objectivity  attach  to  the  moral  law 
as  well.  The  standard  that  restrains  is  one  "above"  us  or 
"beyond"  us.  Even  Kant,  as  the  similitude  of  the  starry 
heavens  would  suggest,  was  not  incapable  of  a  faint  "emo- 
tion of  the  heteronomous,"  and  authority  in  one  form  or 
another  is  a  moral  force  whose  objective  validity  as  moral, 
both  in  its  inhibiting  and  in  its  sanctioning  aspects,  human 
nature  is  prone  to  acknowledge.  The  apprehension  of 
objectivity  is  everywhere,  as  we  have  held,  emotional.  One 
type  of  situation  in  which  the  moral  law  takes  on  this  char- 
acter is  found  in  the  interposition  of  the  law  to  check  a  for- 
ward tendency ;  the  other  is  found  in  the  instant  of  transition 
from  doubt  to  the  new  adjustment  that  has  been  reached. 
In  the  one  case  the  law  is  "inexorable"  in  its  demands.  In 
the  other  case  there  are  two  possibilities:  If  the  adjustment 
has  been  essentially  a  rejection  of  the  new  "temptation," 
the  law  which  one  obeys  is  one  no  longer  inexorable,  but 
sustaining,  as  a  rock  of  salvation.  If  the  adjustment  is  a 
distinctly  new  attitude,  the  sense  of  the  objectivity  of  the 
principle  embodied  in  it  will  commonly  be  less  strong,  if  not 
for  the  time  being  almost  wholly  wanting ;  but  in  the  mo- 
ment of  overt  action  it  will  in  some  degree  wear  the  charac- 
ter of  a  firm  truth  upon  which  one  has  taken  his  stand. 

This  general  view  of  the  logical  constitution  of  the  moral 
experience  may  suggest  a  comparison  with  the  fundamental 
doctrine  of  the  British  Intellectualist  school.  The  Intellec- 
tualist  writers  were  very  largely  guided  in  their  expositions 
by  the  desire  of  refuting  on  the  one  hand  Hobbes  and  on 
the  other  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson.  Against  Hobbes 
they  wished  to  establish  the  obligatory  character  of  the 
moral  law  entirely  apart  from  sanction  or  enactment  by 
political  authority.  Against  the  Sentimentalists  they  wished 
to  vindicate  its  objectivity  and  permanence.  This  twofold 


302  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

purpose  they  accomplished  by  holding  that  the  morality  of 
conduct  lies  in  its  conformity  to  the  "objective  nature  of 
things,"  the  knowledge  of  which,  in  its  moral  aspects,  is 
logically  deducible  from  certain  moral  axioms,  self-evident 
like  those  of  mathematics.  Now  this  mathematical  analogy 
is  the  key  to  the  whole  position  of  the  Intellectualist  writers. 
By  so  conceiving  the  nature  of  knowledge  these  men  seri- 
ously weakened  their  strong  general  position.  Mathematics 
is  just  that  species  of  knowledge  which  is  most  remote  from 
and  apparently  independent  of  any  reference  to  conduct,  and 
the  Intellectualists,  by  choosing  it  as  their  ideal,  were 
thereby  rendered  incapable  of  explaining  the  obligatoriness 
of  the  moral  law.  An*  adequate  psychology  of  knowledge 
would  have  obviated  this  difficulty  in  their  system. 

The  occasion  for  economic  judgment  is  given,  as  we  have 
seen,  in  a  conflict  between  ends  not  incompatible,  in  view  of 
any  ascertainable  conditions  of  the  agent's  nature  as  an 
empirical  self,  but  inhibitory  of  each  other  in  view  of  what 
we  have  described  as  conditions  external  to  the  agent.  Thus 
the  lawyer  in  our  illustration  found  his  plan  of  compromise 
thwarted  by  the  existence  of  such  sociological  conditions  as 
would  make  the  practice  of  his  profession,  in  the  manner 
intended,  impossible,  and  so  cut  off  his  income.  Similarly 
the  peasant  in  a  European  country  finds  that  (for  reasons 
which,  more  probably,  he  does  not  understand)  he  can  no 
longer  earn  a  living  in  the  accustomed  way,  and  emigrates 
to  a  country  in  which  his  capital  and  his  physical  energies 
may  be  more  profitably  employed.  So  also  in  the  everyday 
lives  of  all  of  us  ends  and  interests  quite  disparate,  so  far  as 
any  relation  to  each  other  through  our  psychical  capacities 
is  concerned,  stand  very  frequently  in  opposition,  neverthe- 
less, and  calling  for  adjustment.  We  must  make  a  choice 
between  amusement  or  intellectual  pursuits  or  the  means  of 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  303 

aesthetic  culture,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  common  necessa- 
ries of  life  on  the  other,  and  the  difficulty  of  the  situation 
lies  just  in  absence  of  any  sort  of  "spiritual  affinity"  be- 
tween these  ends.  There  is  no  necessary  ratio  between  the 
satisfaction  of  the  common  needs  of  life  and  the  cultivation 
of  the  higher  faculties — no  ratio  for  which  the  individual 
can  ever  find  a  sanction  in  the  constitution  of  his  empirical 
self  through  the  direct  method  of  ethical  valuation.  The 
common  needs  must  have  their  measure  of  recognition,  but 
no  attempted  ethical  valuation  of  them  can  ever  come  to  a 
result  convincingly  warranted  to  the  "energetic"  self  by 
psychological  conditions.  The  economic  situation  as  such  is 
in  this  sense  (that  is,  from  the  standpoint  of  any  recognized 
ethical  standards)  unintelligible.  It  is  this  ethical  unintelli- 
gibility  that  often  lends  a  genuine  element  of  tragedy  to 
situations  which  press  urgently  and  in  which  the  ends  at 
issue  are  of  great  ethical  moment.  It  is  no  small  matter  to 
the  emigrant,  for  example,  that  he  must  cut  the  very 
roots  by  which  he  has  grown  to  the  sort  of  man  he  finds 
himself  to  be.  His  whole  nature  protests  against  this 
violence,  and  questions  its  necessity,  though  the  necessity  is 
unmistakable  and  it  would  be  quite  impossible  for  him  not 
to  act  accordingly.  Nevertheless,  tragic  as  such  a  conflict 
may  well  be,  it  does  not  differ  in  any  logically  essential  way, 
does  not  differ  in  its  degree  of  strictly  logical  difficulty,  from 
the  ethically  much  less  serious  economic  problems  of  our 
everyday  life. 

Now,  we  have  already  defined  the  economic  act  for  which 
economic  judgment  is  preparatory  as  being,  in  general  terms, 
the  diversion  of  certain  means  from  a  present  use  to  which 
they  have  been  devoted  to  a  new  use  which  has  come  to  seem 
in  a  general  way  desirable.1  Thus,  in  the  cases  just  men- 
tioned, the  lawyer  contemplates  the  virtual  purchase  of  his 

i  See  above,  p.  243  and  p.  259  ad  fin. 


304  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

new  career  by  the  income  which  his  profession  might  in 
years  to  come  afford  him,  the  emigrant  seeks  a  better  market 
for  his  labor,  and  the  pleasure-seeker  and  the  ambitious  student 
and  the  buyer  of  a  commodity  in  the  market  propose  to  them- 
selves, each  one,  the  diversion  from  some  hitherto  intended 
use  of  a  sum  of  money.  Manifestly  it  is  immaterial  from 
our  logical  point  of  view  whether  the  means  in  question 
which  one  proposes  to  apply  in  some  new  way  are  in  the 
nature  of  physical  and  mental  strength,  or  materials  and 
implements  of  manufacture  ready  to  be  used,  or  means  of 
purchase  of  some  sort  wherewith  the  desired  service  or  com- 
modity may  be  obtained  at  once.  The  economic  problem,  to 
state  it  technically,  is  the  problem  of  the  reapplicdbility  of 
the  means,  interpreting  the  category  of  means  quite  broadly. 

In  a  word,  then,  the  method  of  procedure  adapted  to  the 
economic  type  of  situation  is  that  of  valuation  of  the  means, 
not  that  of  direct  valuation  of  the  ends.  This  method  is  one 
of  valuation  since,  like  the  ethical  method,  it  is  determina- 
tive of  a  purpose,  but  it  accomplishes  this  result  in  its  own 
distinctive  way.  The  problem  of  our  present  analysis  will 
accordingly  be  how  this  method  of  valuation  of  the  means 
is  able  to  help  toward  an  adjustment  of  disparate  or  unre- 
lated ends*  which  the  ethical  method  is  inadequate  to  effect. 

Let  us  assume  that  a  vague  purpose  of  foreign  travel,  for 
example,  has  presented  itself  in  imagination,  and  that  the 
preliminary  stage  of  ethical  judgment  has  been  passed 
through,  with  the  result  that  the  purpose,  in  a  more  definite 
form  than  it  could  have  at  first,  is  now  ready  for  economic 
consideration.  In  the  first  place  the  cost  of  the  journey 
must  be  determined,  and  this  step,  in  terms  of  our  present 
point  of  view,  is  simply  a  methodological  device  whereby 
certain  ends  which  the  standards  involved  in  the  stage  of 
ethical  judgment  could  not  suggest  or  could  not  effectually 
take  into  co-operation  with  themselves  in  their  determination 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  305 

of  the  end  are  brought  into  play.  Ascertaining  the  means 
suggests  these  disparate  ends,  these  established  modes  of 
use  of  the  means,  with  the  result  that  the  agent's  "forward 
tendency"  is  checked.  Shall  the  necessary  sums  be  spent 
in  foreign  travel  or  shall  they  be  spent  in  the  present  ways — 
in  providing  various  physical  necessities  and  comforts,  or 
for  various  forms  of  amusement,  or  in  increasing  investments 
in  business  enterprises?  These  modes  of  use  do  not  admit 
of  ethical  comparison  with  the  plan  of  foreign  travel,  and 
the  agent's  interest  must  therefore  now  be  centered  on  the 
means. 

It  is  in  this  check  to  the  agent's  forward  tendency  that  the 
logical  status  of  the  means  is  evinced.  As  merely  so  much 
money  the  means  could  only  serve  to  further  the  execution 
of  the  purpose  that  is  forming,  since  under  the  circumstances 
it  could  only  prompt  immediate  expenditure.  Like  the  subject 
in  factual  judgment,  the  means  in  economic  judgment  have 
their  problematic  aspect  which  as  effectually  hinders  the 
desired  use  of  them  as  could  any  palpable  physical  defect. 
This  problematic  aspect  consists  in  the  fact  of  the  present 
established  mode  of  use  which  the  now-forming  purpose 
threatens  to  disturb,  and  it  is  the  agent's  interest  in  this  mode 
of  use  that  turns  his  attention  to  the  valuation  of  the  means. 

It  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that  in  the  economic  life 
we  find  situations  exactly  corresponding  to  those  of  "con- 
science and  temptation"  and  mechanical  "pull  and  haul" 
which  were  discriminated  in  the  ethical  sphere  and  marked 
off  from  judgment  properly  so  called.  Indeed  it  seems 
reasonable  to  think,  on  general  grounds  of  introspection,  that 
these  methods  of  decision  (if  they  deserve  the  name)  are, 
relatively  speaking,  more  frequently  relied  upon  in  the  eco- 
nomic than  in  the  moral  life.  The  economic  method  of  true 
judgment  is  roundabout  and  more  complex  and  more  difficult 
than  ethical,  and  involves  a  more  express  recourse  to  those 


306  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

abstract  conceptions  which  for  the  most  part  are  only  im- 
plicitly involved  in  valuation  of  the  other  type.  The  economic 
type  of  valuation,  in  fact,  differs  from  the  ethical,  not  in  an 
absolute  or  essential  way,  but  rather  in  the  explicitness  with 
which  it  brings  to  light  and  lays  bare  the  vital  elements  in 
valuation  as  such.  In  general,  then,  the  economic  process 
would  seem  necessarily  to  embrace  three  stages,  which  will  first 
of  all  be  enumerated  and  then  very  briefly  explained  and  dis- 
cussed. These  are:  (1)  a  preliminary  consideration  of  the 
means  necessary  to  attain  the  end — which  must  be  vague  and 
tentative,  of  course,  for  the  reason  that  the  end  as  imagined 
is  so,  as  compared  with  the  fulness  of  detail  which  must  belong 
to  it  before  it  can  be  finally  accepted;  (2)  a  consideration 
of  the  means,  as  thus  provisionally  taken,  in  the  light  of  their 
present  devotion  to  other  purposes,  this  present  devotion 
of  them  being  the  outcome,  in  some  degree  at  least,  of  past 
valuation;  (3)  final  definition  of  the  means  with  reference 
to  the  proposed  use  through  an  adjustment  effected  between 
this  and  the  factors  involved  in  the  past  valuation. 

1.  In  the  first  stage  as  throughout,  it  must  be  carefully 
noted,  the  means  are  under  consideration  not  primarily  in 
their  physical  aspect,  but  simply  as  subject  to  a  possible 
redisposition.  Thus  it  is  not  money  as  lawful  currency 
receivable  at  the  steamship  office  for  an  ocean  passage,  nor 
tools  and  materials  and  labor-power  technically  suitable  for 
the  production  of  a  desired  object,  that  is  the  subject  of  the 
economic  judgment.  The  problem  of  redisposition  would  of 
course  not  be  raised  were  the  means  not  technically  adapt- 
able to  the  purpose,  nor  on  the  other  hand  can  the  means  in 
the  course  of  economic  judgment,  as  a  rule,  escape  some 
measure  of  further  (factual)  inquiry  into  their  technical 
properties;  but  the  standpoints  are  nevertheless  distinct. 
Again,  it  must  be  noted  that  the  means  in  this  first  stage 
will  be  only  roughly  measured.  The  length  of  one's  stay 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  307 

abroad,  the  size  of  the  house  one  wishes  to  build,  the  purpose 
whatever  it  may  be,  is  still  undefined — these  are  in  fact  the 
very  matters  which  the  process  must  determine — and  in  the 
first  instance  it  is  "money  in  general"  or  "a  large  sum  of 
money"  with  reference  to  which  we  raise  the  economic 
problem.  The  category  of  quantity  is  in  fact  essentially  an 
economic  one;  it  is  essentially  a  standpoint  for  determining 
the  means  of  action  in  such  a  way  as  to  facilitate  their  econo- 
mic valuation.  The  reader  familiar  with  the  writings  of  the 
Austrian  school  of  economists  will  easily  recall  how  uniformly 
in  their  discussions  of  the  principle  of  marginal  utility  these 
writers  assume  outright  in  the  first  place  the  division  of  the 
stock  of  goods  into  definite  units,  and  then  raise  the  question 
of  how  the  value  of  a  unit  is  measured.  The  stock  contains 
already  a  hundred  bushels  of  wheat  or  ten  loaves  of  bread — 
apparently  as  a  matter  of  metaphysical  necessity — whereas 
in  fact  the  essential  economic  problem  is  this  very  one  of 
how  "  wheat  at  large  "  comes  to  be  put  in  sacks  of  a  certain 
size  and  "  bread  in  general "  to  be  baked  in  twelve-ounce 
loaves.  The  subdivision  of  the  stock  and  the  valuation  of 
the  unit  are  not  successive  stages,  but  inseparably  correlative 
phases  of  the  valuation-process  as  a  whole.  The  outcome 
may  be  stated  either  way,  in  accordance  with  one's  interest 
in  the  situation. 

2.  But  the  unmeasured  means  as  redisposable  in  an  as  yet 
undetermined  way  bring  to  consciousness  established  meas- 
ured uses  to  which  the  means  have  been  heretofore  assigned 
in  definite  amounts.  In  this  way  the  process  of  determining 
a  definite  quantum  as  redisposable  (which  is  to  say,  of  attain- 
ing to  a  definite  acceptable  plan  of  conduct)  can  begin. 
How,  then,  does  this  fact  of  past  assignment  to  uses  still 
recognized  as  desirable  figure  in  the  situation?  In  the  first 
place  the  past  assignment  may  have  been  (1)  an  outcome  of 
past  economic  valuation,  (2)  an  unhesitating  or  non-economic 


308  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

act  executive  of  an  ethical  decision,  or  (3)  an  act  of  more  or 
less  conscious  obedience  to  "conscience"  or  "authority." 
In  either  case  it  now  stands  as  a  course  of  conduct  which  at 
the  time  was,  in  the  way  explained  above,  sanctioned  to  the 
agent,  to  the  "energetic"  self,  by  the  means  and  conditions 
recognized  as  bearing  upon  it.  In  this  sense,  then,  we  have, 
in  this  recognition  of  the  past  adjustment  and  of  the  eco- 
nomic character  which  the  means  now  have  in  virtue  of  it, 
what  we  may  term  a  judgment  of  "energy-equivalence" 
between  the  means  and  their  established  uses.  For  to  the 
agent  it  was  the  essential  meaning  of  the  sense  of  sanction 
felt  when  the  means  were  assigned  to  these  uses  that  the 
" energetic"  self  would  on  the  whole  be  furthered  thereby 
— and  this  in  view  of  all  the  sacrifices  that  this  use  would 
entail,  or  in  view  of  the  sacrifices  required  for  the  production 
of  the  means,  if  the  case  were  one  in  which  the  means  were 
not  at  hand  and  could  only  be  secured  by  a  more  or  less 
extended  production  process. 

In  the  illustration  we  have  been  considering,  it  will  be 
observed,  there  is  an  extensive  schedule  of  present  uses 
which  the  new  project  calls  in  question  and  from  which  the 
means  must  be  diverted.  This  is  in  fact  the  commoner  case. 
A  new  Use  of  money  will  affect,  as  a  rule,  not  simply  a  single 
present  mode  of  expenditure,  but  will  very  probably  involve 
a  readjustment  throughout  the  whole  schedule  of  expendi- 
ture which  our  separate  past  valuations  of  money  have  in 
effect  co-operated  in  establishing.  So  likewise  if  we  wish  to 
use  part  of  a  store  of  building  materials  or  of  food,  or  of  any 
other  subdivisible  commodity,  we  encounter  an  ordered  sys- 
tem of  consumption  rather  than  a  single  predetermined  use 
which  we  have  not  yet  enjoyed.  Where  this  is  the  case  the 
whole  process  of  valuation  is  greatly  facilitated,  but  this  is 
not  essential.  The  means  in  cases  of  true  economic  valua- 
tion may  be  capable  of  but  a  single  use,  like  a  railroad  ticket 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PBOOESS  309 

or  a  perishable  piece  of  fruit,  or  of  a  virtually  endless 
series  of  uses,  like  a  painting  or  a  literary  masterpiece. 
Whether  the  means  figure  as  representing  but  a  single  use  or 
stand  for  the  conservation  of  an  extensive  system,  their  econo- 
mic significance  is  the  same.  They  are  the  "  energy-equiva- 
lent" of  this  use  or  system  of  uses  considered  as  an  act  or 
system  of  acts  of  consumption  in  furtherance  of  the  self. 
Their  past  assignment  meant  then  and  means  now  simply 
this,  that  the  "energetic"  self  would  thereby  gain  more  than 
it  would  lose  through  the  inevitable  sacrifices.  This  is  the 
economic  significance  of  the  means  in  virtue  of  which  they 
are  now  problematic  to  the  extent  of  checking,  for  a  time  at 
least,  forward  tendency  toward  the  desired  end.1 

3.  The  judgment  of  energy-equivalence,  then,  defines  the 
inhibiting  economic  aspect  of  the  means,  and  moreover  defines 
it  for  the  means  as  subdivided  and  set  apart  for  a  schedule  of 
uses  if  this  was  the  form  of  the  past  adjustments  to  which 
reference  is  made.  The  problem  of  the  third  stage  of  the 
process  is  that  of  "  bringing  subject  and  predicate  together," 
as  we  have  elsewhere  expressed  it  —  that  is,  of  determining, 
in  the  light  of  the  economic  character  of  the  means  as  just 
ascertained,  what  measure  of  satisfaction,  if  any,  may  be 
accorded  to  the  new  and  as  yet  undefined  desire.  The  new 
disposition  of  the  means,  if  one  is  to  be  made,  must  bring  to 
the  "energetic"  self  a  degree  of  furtherance  and  development 
which  shall  be  sensibly  as  great  as  would  come  from  the  estab- 
lished method  of  consumption.  The  means,  as  economic, 

i  We  use  the  expression  " energy-equivalent "  because  the  "excess"  gained  by 
the  self  through  the  past  adjustment  is  not  of  importance  at  just  this  point.  The 
essential  significance  of  the  means  now  is  not  that  they  "cost"  less  than  they  promised 
to  bring  in  in  energy,  but  that  because  they  required  sacrifice  the  self  will  now  lose 
unless  they  are  allowed  to  fulfil  the  promise.  They  are  the  logical  equivalent  of  the 
established  modes  of  consumption  from  the  standpoint  of  conservation  of  the 
energies  of  the  self,  not  the  mathematical  equivalent. 

It  would  be  desirable,  if  there  were  space,  to  present  a  brief  account  of  the 
psychological  basis  of  the  concepts  of  energy  and  energy-equivalence  which  here 
come  into  play,  but  this  must  be  omitted. 


310  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

are  means  to  the  conservation  of  the  old  adjustment,  and 
any  new  disposal  of  them  or  of  any  portion  of  them  for  a 
full  or  partial  execution  of  the  new  purpose  must  make  out 
at  least  as  good  a  case.  It  must  appear  that  the  new  dispo- 
sition is  not  only  physically  possible,  but  also  economically 
necessary  in  the  light  of  the  same  principle  of  expansion  of 
the  self  as  sanctioned  the  disposition  now  in  force.  It  must 
make  the  self  in  some  way  more  efficient — whether  more 
strong  and  symmetrical  in  body,  more  skilled  in  work,  more 
clear  of  brain,  or  more  efficient  in  whatever  other  concrete 
way  may  be  desired. 

Psychologically  the  sanction  of  any  course  of  action 
which  is  taken  as  evidence  of  conformity  to  the  general  rule 
thus  inadequately  stated  is  the  more  or  less  strong  sense  of 
"relaxation"  of  attentive  strain  which  comes  with  the  shift 
of  attention,  in  the  final  survey,  from  means  to  end.  We  may 
accordingly,  for  the  sake  of  greater  definiteness,  restate  in 
the  following  terms  the  process  which  has  just  been  sketched : 
The  ends  in  conflict  at  the  outset  are  ends  which  do  not 
sensibly  bear  upon  each  other  through  their  dependence 
upon  a  common  fund  of  psychical  capacities  or  energies. 
They  are  related  in  the  agent's  experience  solely  through 
their  dependence  upon  a  common  stock  of  physical  means, 
and  they  do  not  therefore  admit  of  adjustment  through 
the  ethical  type  of  process.  The  economic  process  consists 
essentially  of  a  revival  in  imagination  of  the  experiences 
accompanying  the  former  disposition  of  the  means  and  a 
re-enforcement  by  these  of  the  means  in  their  adherence  to 
that  former  and  still  recognized  disposition.  If  an  adapted 
form  of  the  new  end  can  be  imagined  which  will  mediate  a 
like  experience  of  relaxation  when  the  attention  shifts  from 
the  means,  thus  emotionally  re-enforced  in  their  economic 
status,  to  the  end  as  thus  conceived,  the  means  will  be  recog- 
nized as  economically  redisposable.  Thus  the  method  of 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  311 

valuation  of  the  means  makes  possible,  through  appeal  to  the 
sensibly  invariable  experience  of  relaxation  or  assurance  in 
the  outcome  of  judgment,  a  co-ordination  of  disparate  ends 
which  the  ethical  method  of  direct  adjustment  could  not 
effect.1 

The  economic  process  thus  presents  on  analysis  the  same 
factors  as  does  the  ethical.  On  the  subject  side  we  have  the 
means — which  as  economic  are  problematic  as  to  their  reap- 
plicability.  On  the  predicate  side  we  have  the  suggested 
mode  of  reapplication  in  tension  against  conservative  ideals 
of  application  to  established  purposes.  Just  as  it  may  be 
held  that  the  general  ethical  predicate  is  that  of  Right  or 
Good — that  is,  deserving  of  adoption  into  the  system  of 
one's  ends — so  the  economic  predicate  applied  to  the  means 
as  these  come  in  the  end  to  be  defined  is  the  general  con- 
cept Reappliable.  And  in  general  the  distinction  of  the 
types  is  not  an  ultimate  one,  for  the  more  deliberately  and 
rigorously  the  method  of  economic  valuation  is  pursued  — 
in  such  a  case,  for  example,  as  that  of  the  prospective  emigrant 
— the  stronger  will  be  the  agent's  sense  of  a  genuinely 
ethical  sanction  as  belonging  to  the  decision  which  is  in  the 
end  worked  out.  The  more  certain  and  sincere,  therefore, 
will  be  the  agent's  judgment  that  the  means  must  be  reap- 
plied,  for  on  the  sense  of  sanction  of  which  we  speak  rests 
the  explicit  judgment  that  the  purpose  formed  is  expansive 
of  the  self. 

From  the  analysis  thus  presented  it  must  appear,  there- 
fore, that  the  economic  type  of  judgment  is  in  our  sense  a 
constructive  process.  Its  function  is  to  determine  a  particu- 
lar commodity  or  portion  of  a  stock  of  some  commodity  in 
its  economic  character  as  disposable,  and  in  performing 
this  function  it  presents  a  definite  reality  in  the  economic 

i Putting  it  negatively,  the  renunciation  of  the  new  end  involves  a  "greater" 
sacrifice  than  all  the  sacrifices  which  adherence  to  the  present  system  of  consump- 
tion can  compensate. 


312  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

order.  Moreover,  in  thus  defining  the  particular,  recourse  is 
had  to  more  or  less  distinctively  namable  economic  standards 
which  are  in  the  last  resort  symbols  representing  established 
habits  of  consumption  in  the  light  of  which  the  means, 
prima  facie,  seem  not  to  be  available  for  any  other  purposes. 
These  economic  standards,  like  ethical  standards  and  the 
class  concepts  of  science  and  our  ordinary  perceptual  experi- 
ence, are,  with  all  due  respect  to  nominalism,  constitutive  of 
a  real  world — a  world  which  is  real  because  it  lends  form  and 
significance  to  our  knowledge  of  particulars  as  stimuli  to 
conduct. 

We  have  now  before  us  sufficient  reason  for  our  thesis 
that  the  valuation -process  in  both  its  forms  is  constructive 
of  an  order  of  reality,  and  we  have  sufficiently  explained  the 
relation  which  the  economic  order  bears  to  the  inclusive  and 
logically  prior  order  of  ethical  objects  and  relations.  We  are 
now  in  a  position  to  see  that  in  being  thus  constructive  of 
reality  (taking  the  conception  in  its  proper  functional  mean- 
ing) they  are  at  the  same  time  constructive  of  the  self,  since 
the  reality  which  they  construct  is  in  its  functional  aspect 
the  assemblage  of  means  and  conditions,  of  stimuli,  in  short, 
for  the  development  and  expansion  of  the  self.  We  shall 
bring  this  main  division  of  our  study  to  a  close  with  a  series 
of  remarks  in  explanation  and  illustration  of  this  view. 

Let  us  consider  once  more  the  factors  present  in  the 
agent's  final  survey  of  the  situation  after  the  completion  of 
the  judgment -process  and  on  the  verge  of  action.  These 
factors  are,  as  we  have  seen,  (1)  recognition  of  conditions 
sanctioning  the  purpose  formed,  (2)  recognition  of  the  pur- 
pose as,  in  view  of  this  sanction,  warranted  to  the  "energetic" 
self  as  an  eligible  method  of  expansion  and  development,  and 
(3)  recognition  of  the  "energetic"  self,  conversely,  as  in 
possession,  in  virtue  of  the  favorable  conditions  given  in 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  313 

factual  judgment,  of  this  new  method  of  furtherance.  These 
three  factors  are  manifestly  not  so  much  factors  co-operating 
in  the  situation  as  inseparable  aspects  of  it  distinguishable 
from  each  other  and  admitting  of  discriminative  emphasis  in 
accordance  with  the  degree  of  reflective  power  which  the 
individual  may  possess  or  choose  to  exercise.  Strictly  speak- 
ing these  three  aspects  are  present  in  every  conscious  recog- 
nition of  a  purpose  as  one's  own  and  as  presently  to  be 
carried  into  effect,  but  they  are  not  always  present  in  equal 
conspicuousness,  and  never  with  equal  logical  importance  for 
the  individual.  In  fact  this  enumeration  of  aspects  coincides 
with  our  enumeration  of  the  three  stages  in  the  evolution  of 
the  individual's  conscious  moral  attitude  toward  new  pur- 
poses given  in  impulse — in  the  third  of  which  the  last 
named  of  these  aspects  comes  to  the  fore  with  the  others  in 
logical  or  functional  subordination  to  it. 

Now  it  will  be  apparent  on  grounds  of  logic,  as  on  the 
evidence  of  simple  introspection,  that  in  this  third  type  of 
attitude — in  the  attitude  of  true  valuation,  that  is  to  say — 
the  energetic  self  cannot  be  indentified  with  the  chosen  pur- 
pose. The  purpose  is  a  determinate  specified  act  to  be  per- 
formed subject  to  recognized  conditions,  and  with  the  use  of 
the  co-ordinated  means ;  the  self,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  pro- 
cess to  which  this  particular  purpose  is,  indeed,  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  self's  conservation  and  increase,  indispen- 
sable, but  which  is  nevertheless  apart  from  the  purpose  in 
the  sense  that  without  the  purpose  it  would  still  be  a  self, 
though  perhaps  a  narrower  and  less  developed  one.  Our 
standpoint  here  as  elsewhere,  the  reader  must  remember,  is 
the  logical.  It  is  the  standpoint  of  the  agent's  own  inter- 
pretation of  his  experience  of  judgment  during  the  judgment- 
process  and  at  its  close,  and  not  the  standpoint  of  the  psy- 
chological mediation  of  this  experience  as  a  series  of  occur- 
rences. Thus  we  are  here  far  from  wishing  to  deny  the 


314  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

general  proposition  that  a  man's  purposes  are  an  expression 
of  his  nature,  as  the  psychologist  might  describe  it,  or  the 
proposition  that  a  man's  conduct  and  his  character  are  one 
and  the  same  thing  viewed  from  different  points  of  view.  We 
wish  merely  to  insist  upon  the  fact  that  these  psychological 
propositions  are  not  a  true  account  of  the  agent's  own  expe- 
rience of  himself  and  of  his  purposes  while  these  latter  are 
in  the  making  or  are  on  the  verge  of  execution.  There  is 
indeed  no  conflict  between  this  " inside  view"  of  the  judg- 
ment-process and  of  the  final  survey  and  the  psychological 
propositions  just  mentioned.  The  identity  of  conduct  and 
character  means  not  simply  that  as  the  man  is  so  does  he 
act,  but  quite  as  much,  'and  in  a  more  important  way,  that  as 
he  acts  so  is  he  and  so  does  he  become.  It  is,  then,  the 
essence  of  the  agent's  own  view  of  the  situation  that  his 
character  is  in  the  making  and  that  the  purpose  is  the 
method  to  be  taken.  To  the  agent  the  self  is  not,  indeed, 
independent  of  the  purpose,  for  plainly  it  is  recognized  that 
upon  just  this  purpose  the  self  is,  in  the  sense  explained,  in 
a  vital  way  dependent.  Nevertheless  the  self  is  in  the 
agent's  apprehension  essentially  beyond  the  purpose,  and 
larger  than  the  purpose,  and  even,  we  may  say,  metaphysically 
apart  from  it.  Now  the  conclusion  which  we  wish  to  draw 
from  this  examination  of  the  agent's  attitude  in  judgment  is 
that  no  formulation  of  an  ideal  self  can  ever  be  adequate  to 
his  purposes,  not  simply  because  any  such  formulation  must, 
as  Green  allows,  inevitably  be  incomplete  and  inconsistent, 
but  because  the  self  as  a  process  is  in  the  agent's  own  appre- 
hension of  it  inherently  incapable  of  formulation.  Any 
formulation  that  might  be  attempted  must  be  in  terms  of 
particular  purposes  (since  in  a  modern  ethical  theory  the  self 
must  be  a  "concrete"  and  not  an  abstract  universal),  and  it 
is  easy  to  see  that  any  such  would  be,  to  the  agent  in  the 
attitude  of  true  ethical  judgment,  worse  than  useless.  It 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  315 

could  as  contentual  and  concrete  only  be  a  composite  of 
existing  standards,  more  or  less  coherently  put  together, 
offered  to  the  agent  as  a  substitute  for  the  new  standard 
which  he  is  trying  to  work  out.  If  there  were  not  need  of 
a  new  standard  there  would  be  no  judgment -process;  the 
agent  must  be,  to  say  the  least,  embarrassed,  even  if  the 
unwitting  imposture  does  not  deceive  him,  when  such  a  com- 
posite, useful  and  indeed  indispensable  in  its  proper  place  as 
a  standard  of  reference  and  a  source  of  suggestion,  is  urged 
upon  him  as  suitable  for  a  purpose  which  in  the  very  nature 
of  the  case  it  is  logically  incapable  of  serving.1 

To  the  agent,  then,  the  "energetic"  self  can  never  be 
represented  as  an  ideal — can  never  be  expressed  in  terms  of 
purpose — since  it  is  in  its  very  nature  logically  incongruous 
with  any  possible  particular  purpose  or  generalization  of 
such  purposes.  It  is  commonly  imaged  by  the  agent  in 
some  manner  of  sensuous  terms,  but  it  is  imaged,  in  so  far  as 
the  case  is  one  of  judgment  in  a  proper  sense,  for  use  as  a 
stimulus  to  the  methodical  process  of  valuation — not  as  a 
standard,  which  if  really  adequate  would  make  valuation 
unnecessary.  The  agent's  consciousness  of  himself  as  "en- 
ergetic" cannot  be  an  ideal;  it  comes  to  consciousness  only 
through  the  endeavor,  first  to  follow,  and  then,  in  a  later 
stage  of  moral  development,  to  use  ideals,  and  has  for  its 
function,  as  a  presentation,  the  incitement  of  the  process  of 
methodical  use  of  standards  in  the  control  of  the  agent's 

i  Green,  as  is  well  known,  allows  that  any  formulation  of  the  ideal  self  must  be 
incomplete,  but  holds  that  it  is  not  for  this  reason  useless.  But  this  is  to  assume 
that  development  in  the  ideal  is  never  to  be  radically  reconstructive,  that  the  ideal 
is  to  expand  and  fill  out  along  established  and  unchangeable  lines  of  growth  so  that  all 
increase  shall  be  in  the  nature  of  accretion.  The  self  as  a  system  is  fixed  and  all 
individual  moral  growth  is  in  the  nature  of  approximation  to  this  absolute  ideal. 
This  would  appear  to  be  essentially  identical  in  a  logical  sense  with  Mr.  Spencer's 
hypothesis  of  social  evolution  as  a  process  of  gradual  approach  to  a  condition  of 
perfect  adaptation  of  society  and  the  individual  to  each  other  in  an  environment  to 
which  society  is  perfectly  adapted  —  a  condition  in  which  "  perfectly  evolved  "  indi- 
viduals shall  live  in  a  state  of  blessedness  in  conformity  to  the  requirements  of 
"absolute  ethics."  For  a^  criticism  of  this  latter  type  of  view  see  ME.  TAYLOR'S 
above-mentioned  work  (chap,  v,  passim). 


316  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

impulsive  ends.  It  is  not  an  anticipatory  vision  of  the  final 
goal  of  life,  but  the  agent's  coming  to  consciousness  of  the 
general  impulse  and  movement  of  the  life  that  is. 

It  is  an  inevitable  consequence  of  acceptance  of  a  con- 
tentual  view  of  the  "energetic"  self  as  one's  ideal  that 
reflective  morality  should  tend  to  degenerate  into  an  intro- 
spective conscientiousness  constantly  in  unstable  equilibrium 
between  a  pharisaical  selfishness  on  the  one  hand  and  a  mor- 
ally scarcely  more  dangerous  hypocrisy  on  the  other.  There 
is  certainly  much  justice  in  the  stinging  characterization  of 
"  Neo-Hegelian  Egoism"  which  Mr.  Taylor  somewhere  in 
his  unsearchable  book  applies  to  the  currently  prevailing 
conventionalized  type  of  idealistic  ethics.  If  the  self  of  the 
valuation-process  is  an  ultimate  goal  of  effort,  then  there 
must  certainly  be  an  irreconcilable  contrast  to  the  disadvantage 
of  the  latter  between  the  plain  man's  objective  desire  for  right 
conduct,  as  such,  and  for  the  welfare  of  his  fellow-beings, 
and  the  moralist's  anxious  questionings  of  the  rectitude  of 
the  motives  by  which  his  conformity  to  the  fixed  moral 
standard  is  prompted.1  Into  the  value  and  significance  of 
the  attitude  of  conscientious  examination  of  one's  moral  mo- 
tives we^are  not  here  concerned  to  inquire,  but  need  only 
insist,  in  accordance  with  our  present  view,  that  its  value 
must  be  distinctly  subordinate  and  incidental  to  the  general 
course  and  outcome  of  the  valuation-process.  In  the  valua- 
tion-process, consciousness  of  self  is  not  an  object  of  solici- 
tude, but  simply,  we  repeat,  a  pure  presentation  of  stimulus, 
having  for  its  office  the  incitement,  and  if  need  be  the  reincite- 
ment,  of  the  attitude  of  deference  to  the  suggestions  of  old 
standards  and  openness  to  the  petitions  of  new  impulse,  and 
of  methodically  bringing  these  to  bear  upon  each  other. 

1  For  GEEEN'S  cautious  defense  of  conscientiousness  as  a  moral  attitude  see  the 
Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  Book  IV,  chap,  i ;  and  for  a  statement  of  the  present  point 
of  view  as  bearing  upon  Green's  difficulty,  see  DEWEY,  The  Study  of  Ethics:  A  Syl- 
labw,  p.  37  ad  fin.,  and  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  II,  pp.  661,  662. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PEOCESS  317 

The  outcome  of  such  a  process,  of  course,  cannot  be  pre- 
dicted— and  for  the  same  reasons  as  make  unpredictable  the 
scientist's  factual  hypothesis.  Just  as  the  scientist's  data  are 
incomplete  and  ill-assorted  and  unorganized,  for  the  reason 
that  they  have,  of  necessity,  been  collected,  and  must  at  the 
outset  be  interpreted,  in  the  light  of  present  concepts,  whose 
inadequacy  the  very  existence  of  the  problem  at  issue  demon- 
strates, so  the  final  moral  purpose  that  shall  be  developed  is 
not  to  be  deduced  from  any  possible  inventory  of  the  situa- 
tion as  it  stands.  The  process  in  both  cases  is  one  of  recon- 
struction, and  the  test  of  the  validity  of  the  reconstruction 
must  in  both  cases  be  of  the  same  essentially  practical  char- 
acter. In  both  cases  the  process  is  constructive  of  reality, 
in  the  functional  signification  of  the  term.  In  both  the 
judgment  process  is  constructive  also  of  the  self,  in  the 
sense  that  upon  the  determination  of  the  agent's  future  atti- 
tude the  cumulative  outcome  of  his  past  attitudes  is  methodi- 
cally brought  to  bear.1 

V 

Judgments  of  value  are,  then,  objective  in  their  import  in 
the  same  sense  as  are  the  factual  judgments  in  which  the 
conditions  of  action  are  presented.  The  ideal  problematic  sit- 
uation is,  in  the  last  resort,  ethical,  in  the  sense  of  requiring 
for  its  solution  determination  of  the  new  end  that  has  arisen 
with  reference  to  existing  standards.  In  structure  and  in 
function  the  judgment  in  which  the  outcome  of  this  process 
is  presented  is  knowledge,  and  objective  in  the  only  valid 
acceptation  of  the  term. 

i  Along  the  line  thus  inadequately  suggested  might  be  found  an  answer  to  certain 
criticisms  of  the  attempt  to  dispense  with  a  metaphysical  idea  of  the  self.  Such 
criticisms  usually  urge  that  without  reference  to  a  metaphysical  ideal  no  meaning 
attaches  to  such  conceptions  as  "adjustment,"  "expansion,"  "furtherance,"  and 
the  like  as  predicated  of  the  moral  acts  of  an  agent  in  their  effect  upon  the  "  ener- 
getic "  self.  Anything  that  one  may  do,  it  is  said,  is  expansive  of  the  self,  if  it  be 
something  new,  except  as  we  judge  it  by  a  metaphysical  ideal  of  a  rightly  expanded 
self.  For  an  excellent  statement  of  this  general  line  of  criticism  see  STRATTON,  "A 
Psychological  Test  of  Virtue,"  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  Vol.  XI,  p.  200. 


318  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 


But,  after  all,  it  may  be  urged,  is  it  not  the  essential 
mark  of  the  objective  that  it  should  be  accessible  to  all 
men,  and  not  in  the  nature  of  the  case  valid  for  only  a  single 
individual?  At  best  the  objectivity  of  content  which  has 
been  made  out  for  the  judgment  of  value  is  purely  functional, 
and  not  such  as  can  be  verified  by  appeal  to  the  consensus 
of  other  persons.  The  agent's  assurance  of  the  reality  of 
the  economic  or  ethical  subject-matter  which  he  is  endeavor- 
ing to  determine,  and  his  sense  of  the  objectivity  of  the 
results  which  he  reaches,  need  not  be  denied.  These  may 
well  enough  be  illusions  of  personal  prejudice  or  passion^  or 
even  normal  illusions  of  the  reflective  faculty,  like  that  of 
interpreting  the  secondary  qualities  of  bodies  as  objective  in 
the  same  sense  as  are  the  "bulk,  figure,  extension,  number, 
and  motion  of  their  solid  parts."1  Any  man  can  see  the 
physical  object  to  which  I  point,  and  verify  with  his  own  eyes 
the  qualities  which  I  ascribe  to  it,  but  no  man  can  either 
understand  or  verify  my  judgment  that  the  purpose  I  have 
formed  is  in  accord  with  rational  ideals  of  industry  and  self- 
denial,  or  that  this  portion  of  my  winter's  fuel  may  be  given 
to  a  neighbor  who  has  none. 

But  this  line  of  objection  proves  too  much,  for,  made 
consistent  with  itself,  it  really  amounts  to  a  denial  that  the 
very  judgment  of  sense-perception,  to  which  it  appeals  so 
confidently  as  a  criterion,  has  objective  import.  The  first 
division  of  this  study  was  intended  to  show  that  every  object 

J  The  polemic  of  certain  recent  writers  (as,  for  example,  EHRENFELS  in  his  Sys- 
tem der  Werttheorie)  against  the  objectivity  of  judgments  of  value  appears  to  rest 
upon  an  uncritical  acceptance  of  the  time-honored  distinction  between  "primary" 
and  "secondary"  qualities  as  equivalent  to  the  logical  distinction  of  subjective 
and  objective.  Thus  EHRENFELS  confutes  "das  Vorurteil  von  der  objectiven 
Bedeutung  des  Wertbegriffes"  by  explaining  it  as  due  to  a  misleading  usage  of  speech 
expressive  of  "an  impulse,  deep-rooted  in  the  human  understanding,  to  objectify 
its  presentations"  and  then  goes  on  to  say  "We  do  not  desire  things  because  we 
recognize  the  presence  in  them  of  a  mysterious  impalpable  essence  of  Value  but  we 
ascribe  value  to  them  because  we  desire  them."  (Op.  cit.,  Bd.  I,  p.  2.)  This  may  serve 
to  illustrate  the  easy  possibility  of  confusing  the  logical  and  psychological  points  of 
view,  as  likewise  does  EHRENFELS'S  formal  definition  of  value.  (Bd.  I.,  p.  65.) 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PBOCESS  319 

in  the  experience  of  each  individual  is  for  the  individual  a 
unique  construction  of  his  own,  determined  in  form  and  in 
details  by  individual  interests  and  purposes,  and  therefore 
different  from  that  object  in  the  experience  of  any  other 
individual  which  in  social  intercourse  passes  current  as 
the  same.  The  real  object  is  for  me  the  object  which 
functions  in  my  experience,  presenting  problematic  aspects 
for  solution,  and  lending  itself  more  or  less  service- 
ably  to  my  purposes;  and  this  object  is,  we  hold,  not  the 
object  as  socially  current,  but  the  complete  object  which,  as 
complete  in  its  determination  with  reference  to  my  unique 
purposes,  cannot  possibly  have  social  currency.  The  objec- 
tion as  stated  cuts  away  the  very  ground  on  which  it  rests, 
since  the  shortcoming  which  it  finds  in  the  judgment  of 
ethical  or  economic  value  is  present  in  the  particular  judg- 
ment of  sense-perception  also.  The  object  about  which  I 
can  assure  myself  by  an  immediate  appeal  to  other  persons 
is  the  object  in  its  bare  "  conceptual "  aspects  —  the  object 
as  a  dictionary  might  define  it,  the  commodity  as  it  might 
be  described  in  a  trade  catalogue,  or  the  ethical  act  as  defined 
by  the  criminal  code  or  in  the  treatise  of  a  moral  philoso- 
pher. It  is  an  object  consisting  of  a  central  core  or  fixed 
deposit  of  meaning,  which  renders  it  significant  in  a  certain 
general  way  to  a  number  of  persons,  or  even  to  all  men,  but 
which  is  not  yet  adequately  known  by  me  from  the  stand- 
point of  my  present  forming  purpose.  In  virtue  of  these 
conceptual  characters  it  is  adaptable  to  my  purpose,  which  is 
as  yet  general  and  indeterminate;  but  in  the  nature  of  the 
case  it  cannot  yet  be  known  to  me  as  applicable  to  my 
prospective  concrete  purpose,  as  this  shall  come  to  be 
through  judgment. 

Thus,  if  the  test  of  objectivity  of  import  is  to  be  that  the 
judgment  shall  present  an  object  or  a  fact  which,  as  pre- 
sented, is  socially  current  among  men  and  not  shut  away  in 


320  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

the  individual  intelligence  apart  from  the  possibility  of  social 
verification,  then  the  apparent  nominalism  of  the  objection 
we  are  considering  turns  out  to  be  the  uttermost  extreme  of 
realism.  Such  a  test  amounts  to  a  virtual  affirmation  that 
the  sole  objective  reality  is  the  conceptual,  and  that  the 
"accidents"  of  one's  particular  object  of  sense-perception  are 
the  arbitrary  play  of  private  preference  or  fancy.  At  this 
point,  however,  the  objection  may  shift  its  ground  and  take 
refuge  in  some  such  position  as  the  following:  The  real 
object  is  indeed  the  object  which  the  individual  knows  in 
relation  to  his  particular  purpose,  and  it  is  indeed  impossible 
that  the  individual's  judgment  should  be  limited  in  its  con- 
tent to  coincidence  with  the  conceptual  elements  of  meaning 
which  are  socially  current.  The  building-stone  which  one  has 
judged  precisely  fit  for  a  special  purpose,  the  specimen  which 
the  mineralogist  or  the  botanist  examines  under  his  micro- 
scope, the  tool  whose  peculiarity  of  working  one  has  learned 
to  make  allowance  for  in  use — these  all  are,  of  course, 
highly  individual  objects,  possessing  for  the  person  in  ques- 
tion an  indefinite  number  of  objective  aspects  of  which  no 
other  person  can  possibly  be  conscious  at  the  time.  And, 
more  than  this,  even  though  the  individual  may,  in  his  scru- 
tiny of  the  object,  have  discovered  no  conspicuous  new  quali- 
ties in  it  which  were  not  present  in  the  socially  current 
meaning,  the  object  will  still  possess  an  individuality  making 
it  genuinely  unique  merely  through  its  co-ordination  with 
other  objects  in  the  mechanical  process  of  working  out  the 
purpose  in  hand.  It  is  at  least  an  object  standing  here  at 
just  this  time,  a  tool  cutting  this  particular  piece  of  stone 
and  striking  at  this  instant  with  this  particular  ringing 
sound,  and  these  perhaps  wholly  nonessential  facts  will 
nevertheless  serve  to  individualize  the  object  (if  one  chances 
to  think  of  them)  in  the  sense  of  making  it  such  a  one  as 
no  other  person  knows.  All  this  may  be  granted,  the  objec- 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  321 

tion  may  allow,  and  yet  the  vital  point  remains;  for  this  is 
not  what  it  was  intended,  even  in  the  first  place,  to  deny. 
The  vital  point  at  issue  is  not  whether  the  object  which  I 
know  is  known  as  I  know  it  by  any  other  person,  but 
whether,  in  the  nature  of  things,  it  is  one  that  can  be  so 
known. 

Herein,  then,  lies  the  difference  between  judgments  of 
fact  and  judgments  of  value.  The  mineralogist  can  train 
his  pupil  to  see  precisely  what  he  himself  sees ;  and  so  like- 
wise in  any  case  of  sense-perception,  the  object,  however 
recondite  may  be  the  qualities  or  features  which  one  may  see 
in  it,  can  nevertheless '  be  seen  by  any  other  person  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  on  the  single,  more  often  not  insuper- 
ably difficult,  condition  that  the  discoverer  shall  point  these 
out  or  otherwise  prepare  the  other  for  seeing  them.  But 
with  the  ton  of  coal  which  one  may  judge  economically  dis- 
posable for  a  charitable  purpose  the  case  stands  differently, 
since  it  is  not  in  its  visible  or  other  physical  aspects  that  the 
ton  of  coal  is  here  the  subject  of  the  judgment.  It  is  as 
having  been  set  apart  by  oneself  exclusively  for  other  uses 
that  the  ton  of  coal  now  functions  as  an  object  and  now 
possesses  the  character  which  the  economic  judgment  has 
given  it ;  and  the  case  stands  similarly  with  a  contemplated 
act,  of  telling  the  truth  in  a  trying  situation.  The  valuation 
placed  upon  the  commodity  or  upon  the  moral  act  depends 
essentially  upon  psychological  conditions  of  temperament, 
disposition,  mood,  or  whim  into  which  it  would  be  impos- 
sible for  another  person  to  enter,  and  these  depend  upon 
conditions  of  past  training  and  native  endowment  which  can 
never  occur  or  be  combined  in  future  in  precisely  the  same 
way  for  any  other  individual.  In  short,  the  physical  object 
is  describable  and  can  be  made  socially  current,  though 
doubtless  with  more  or  less  of  difficulty,  if  other  persons 
will  attend  to  it  and  learn  to  see  it  as  I  see  it;  but  the  value 


322  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

of  an  economic  object  or  a  moral  act  depends  upon  my 
desires  and  feelings,  and  therefore  must  remain  a  matter  of 
my  private  appreciation. 

In  answering  this  amended  form  of  the  objection  it  is 
entirely  unnecessary  to  discuss  the  issue  of  fact  which  it  has 
raised  as  to  whether  or  not  complete  description  of  a  physical 
object  or  event  is  a  practical  or  theoretical  possibility.  It  need 
only  be  pointed  out  that  at  best  such  complete  description  can 
only  be  successful  in  its  purpose  on  condition  that  the  individ- 
ual upon  whom  the  experiment  is  tried  be  willing  to  attend 
and  have  the  requisite  "  apperceptive  background."  The 
accuracy  with  which  another  person's  knowledge  shall  copy 
the  knowledge  which  I  endeavor  to  impart  to  him  must  mani- 
festly depend  upon  these  two  leading  conditions,  not  to  men- 
tion also  the  measure  of  my  own  pedagogical  and  literary  skill. 
Any  consideration  of  such  a  purely  psychological  problem 
as  is  here  suggested  would  be  entirely  out  of  place  in  a  dis- 
cussion the  purpose  of  which  is  not  that  of  analyzing  the  pro- 
cess of  judgment,  but  that  of  interpreting  its  meaning  aspects. 
Let  us  grant  the  entire  psychological  possibility  of  making 
socially  current  in  the  manner  here  suggested  the  most 
highly  individual  and  concrete  cognition  of  an  object  one 
may  please,  and  let  us  grant,  moreover,  that  this  possibility 
has  been  actually  realized.  This  concurrent  testimony  of 
the  witness  will  doubtless  confirm  one's  impression  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  process  of  observation  and  inference  whereby 
the  knowledge  which  has  been  imparted  was  first  gained, 
but  we  must  deny  that  it  can  do  more  than  this.  For  indeed, 
apart  from  some  independent  self-reliant  conviction  of  the 
objective  validity  of  the  knowledge  in  question,  how  should 
another's  assent  be  taken  as  confirmation  and  not  rather  as 
evidence  of  one's  own  mere  skill  in  suggestion  and  of  the 
other's  susceptibility  thereto?  We  must  deny  that  even  in 
the  improved  form  the  criterion  of  social  currency  is  a  valid 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  323 

one.  In  a  word,  the  social  currency  of  knowledge  to  the 
extent  to  which  it  can  exist  requires  as  its  condition,  and  is 
evidence  of,  the  equal  social  currency  of  certain  interests, 
purposes,  or  points  of  view  for  predication;  and  if  it  be 
possible  to  make  socially  current  an  item  of  concrete  knowl- 
edge, with  all  its  concrete  fulness  of  detail,  then  a  fortiori  it 
must  be  possible  to  make  socially  current  the  concrete  individ- 
ual purpose  with  reference  to  which  this  item  of  knowledge 
first  of  all  took  form.  Whether  such  a  thing  be  psychologi- 
cally possible  at  all  the  reader  may  decide;  but  if  it  be 
possible  in  the  sphere  of  knowledge  of  fact,  then  it  must  be 
possible  in  the  sphere  of  valuation.  In  short,  judgment 
in  either  field,  in  definition  of  a  certain  object  or  commodity 
or  moral  act  as,  for  the  agent,  an  objective  fact  possessing 
certain  characters,  involves  the  tacit  assumption  of  social 
verifiability  as  a  matter  of  course ;  but  it  does  not  rest  upon 
this  assumption,  nor  is  this  assumption  the  essence  of  its 
meaning.  To  say  that  my  judgment  is  socially  verifiable, 
that  my  concrete  object  of  perception  or  of  valuation  would 
be  seen  as  I  see  it  by  any  person  in  precisely  my  place,  is 
merely  a  tautological  way  of  formally  announcing  that  / 
have  made  the  judgment  and  have  now  a  definite  object 
which  to  me  has  a  certain  definite  functional  meaning. 

Thus,  instead  of  drawing  a  distinction  between  the 
realms  of  fact  and  value,  as  between  what  is  or  can  be  com- 
mon to  all  intelligent  beings  and  what  must  be  unique  for 
each  individual  one,  we  must  hold  that  the  two  realms  are 
coextensive.  The  socially  current  object  answers  to  a  cer- 
tain general  type  of  conscious  purpose  or  interest  active  in 
the  individual  and  so  to  a  general  habit  of  valuation,  and 
the  concrete  object  to  a  special  determination  of  this  type  of 
purpose  with  reference  to  others  in  the  recognized  working 
system  of  life.  The  agent's  final  attitude,  on  the  conclusion 
of  the  judgment-process,  may  be  expressed  in  either  sort  of 


324  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

judgment — in  a  judgment  of  the  value  of  commodity  or  moral 
purpose,  or  in  a  judgment  of  concrete  fact  setting  forth  the 
"external"  conditions  which  warrant  the  purpose  to  the 
"energetic"  self.  Throughout  the  judgment-process  there 
is  a  correlation  between  the  movement  whereby  the  socially 
current  object  develops  into  the  adapted  means  and  that 
whereby  the  socially  current  type  of  conduct  develops  into 
the  defined  and  valued  purpose.1 

At  this  point,  however,  a  second  general  objection  pre- 
sents itself.  However  individual  the  content  of  my  knowl- 
edge of  physical  fact  may  be,  and  however  irrelevant,  from 
the  logical  point  of  view,  to  my  confidence  in  its  objective 
validity  may  be  the  possibility  of  sharing  it  with  other  per- 
sons, nevertheless  it  refers  to  an  object  which  is  in  some 
sense  permanent,  and  therein  differs  from  my  valuations.  In 
economic  valuation  I  reach  a  definition  of  a  certain  com- 
modity and  am  confirmed  in  it  by  all  the  conditions  that 
enter  into  my  final  survey  of  the  situation.  But  my  desire 
for  the  new  sort  of  consumption  may  fail,  and  so  expose  my 
valuation  to  easy  attack  from  any  new  desire  that  may  arise ; 
or  my  supply  of  the  commodity  in  question  may  be  suddenly 
increased  or  diminished,  and  my  valuation  of  the  unit  quan- 
tity thereby  changed.  Likewise  my  ethical  valuation  may 
have  to  be  reversed  (as  Mr.  Taylor  has  insisted)  by  reason 
of  a  change  of  disposition  or  particular  desire  which  makes 
impossible,  except  in  obedience  to  some  other  and  inclusive 
valuation,  further  adherence  to  it.  And  these  changes  take 
place  without  any  accompanying  sense  of  their  doing  violence 
to  objective  fact  or,  on  the  other  hand,  any  judgment  of  their 

i  The  essential  dependence  of  factual  judgment  upon  the  rise  of  economic  and 
ethical  conflict  is  implied  in  the  widely  current  doctrine  of  the  teleological  character 
of  knowledge.  It  is  indeed  nowadays  something  like  a  commonplace  to  say  in  one 
sense  or  another  that  knowledge  is  relative  to  ends,  but  it  is  not  always  recognized  by 
those  who  hold  this  view  that  an  end  never  appears  as  such  in  consciousness  alone. 
The  end  that  guides  in  the  construction  of  factual  knowledge  is  an  end  in  ethical  or 
economic  conflict  with  some  other  likewise  indeterminate  end  in  the  manner  above 
discussed. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  325 

being  in  the  nature  of  corrections  of  previous  errors  in  valua- 
tion, and  so  more  closely  in  accordance  with  the  truth. 
Moreover,  a  new  valuation,  taking  the  place  of  an  old,  does 
not  supplement  its  predecessor  as  one  set  of  judgments 
about  a  physical  object  may  supplement  another,  made  from 
a  different  point  of  view,  but  does  literally  take  its  place, 
and  this  without  necessarily  condemning  it  as  having  been 
erroneous. 

This  general  objection  rests  upon  a  number  of  fairly 
obvious  misconceptions,  and  its  strength  is  apparent  only. 
In  the  first  place,  the  question  of  the  objectivity  of  any  type 
of  judgment  must  in  the  end,  as  we  have  seen,  reduce  itself  to 
a  question  of  the  judgment's  import  to  the  agent.  How- 
ever the  agent's  valuations  may  shift  from  time  to  time, 
each  several  one  will  be  sanctioned  to  the  agent  by  the 
changed  conditions  exhibited  in  the  inventory  which  the 
agent  takes  at  the  close  of  judgment  which  has  formed  it. 
The  conditions  have  changed,  and  the  valuation  of  the 
earlier  purpose  has  likewise  changed;  but  the  new  purpose 
is  sanctioned  by  the  new  conditions,  and  the  test  of  the  pre- 
sumed validity  of  the  new  valuation  can  only  be  in  the 
manner  already  discussed1  the  test  of  actual  execution  of 
the  purpose.  In  the  change,  as  the  agent  interprets  the 
situation,  there  is  no  violation  of  the  former  purpose  nor  a 
nearer  approach  to  truth.  Each  valuation  is  true  for  the 
situation  to  which  it  corresponds.  We  are  obviously  not 
here  considering  the  case  of  error.  An  error  in  valuation 
is  evidenced  to  the  agent,  not  by  the  need  of  a  new  valua- 
tion answering  to  changed  conditions,  but  by  the  failure  of 
a  given  valuation  to  make  good  its  promise,  although  to  all 
appearance  conditions  have  remained  unchanged.  If  the 
conditions  have  changed,  then  the  purpose  and  the  condi- 
tions must  be  redetermined,  if  the  expansion  of  the  "ener- 

1  See  above,  pp.  282,  283. 


326  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

getic"  self  is  to  continue;  but  the  former  valuation  does  not 
thereby  become  untrue. 

These  brief  remarks  should  suffice  by  way  of  answer,  but 
it  will  serve  advantageously  to  illustrate  our  general  position 
if  we  pursue  the  objection  somewhat  farther.  The  physical 
object  is,  nevertheless,  permanent,  it  will  be  said,  and  this 
surely  distinguishes  it  from  the  object  (now  freely  acknowl- 
edged as  such)  of  the  value-judgment.  To  one  man  gold 
may  be  soluble  in  aqua  regia  and  to  another  worth  so 
many  pence  an  ounce,  but  different  and  individual  as  are 
these  judgments  and  the  standpoints  they  respectively  imply, 
the  gold  is  one,  impartially  admitting  at  the  same  time  of 
both  characterizations.  On  the  other  hand,  one  cannot 
judge  an  act  good  and  bad  at  once.  The  purpose  of  decep- 
tion that  may  be  good  is  one  controlled  and  shaped  by  ideals 
quite  different  from  those  which  permit  deception  of  the  evil 
sort  —  is,  in  truth,  taken  as  a  total  act,  altogether  different 
from  the  purpose  of  deception  which  one  condemns,  and  not, 
like  the  "parcel  of  matter"  in  the  two  judgments  about 
gold,  the  subject  of  both  valuations. 

A  brief  consideration  of  the  meaning  of  this  "parcel  of 
matter"  will  easily  expose  the  weakness  of  the  plea.  In  the 
last  analysis  the  "parcel  of  matter"  must  for  the  agent 
reduce  itself,  let  us  say,  to  certain  controllable  energies  cen- 
tering about  certain  closely  contiguous  points  in  space  and 
capable,  in  their  exercise,  of  setting  free  or  checking  other 
energies  in  the  system  of  nature.  Thus,  put  in  aqua  regia 
the  gold  will  dissolve,  but  in  the  atmosphere  it  retains  its 
brilliant  color,  and  in  the  photographer's  solution  its  ener- 
gies have  still  a  different  mode  of  manifestation.  And  thus 
it  would  appear  that  the  various  predicates  which  are  applied 
to  "gold"  imply,  each  one,  a  unique  set  of  conditions.  Gold 
is  soluble  in  aqua  regia,  but  not  if  it  is  to  retain  its  yellow 
luster;  which  predicate  is  to  be  true  of  it  depends  upon  the 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  327 

conditions  under  which  the  energies  "resident  in  the  gold" 
are  to  be  set  free,  just  as  the  moral  character  of  an  act 
depends  upon  the  social  conditions  obtaining  at  the  time  of 
its  performance — that  is,  upon  the  ideals  with  reference  to 
which  it  has  been  shaped  in  judgment.  How  can  one 
maintain  that  in  a  literal  and  concrete  physical  sense  gold 
in  process  of  solution  is  the  "same"  as  gold  entering  into 
chemical  combination?  Surely  the  energy  conditions  which 
constitute  the  "gold"  in  the  two  processes  are  not  the 
same  —  and  can  one  •  nowadays  hope  to  find  sameness  in 
unchangeable  atoms?1 

In  a  word,  the  permanent  substance  or  "real  essence" 
that  admits  of  various  mutually  supplementary  determina- 
tions corresponding  to  diverse  points  of  view  is,  strictly 
speaking,  a  convenient  abstraction,  and  not  an  existent  fact 
in  time — and  we  shall  maintain  that  the  same  species  of 
abstraction  has  its  proper  place,  and  in  fact  occurs,  in  the 
sphere  of  moral  judgment.  The  type  of  moral  conduct  that 
in  every  actual  case  of  its  occurrence  in  the  moral  order  is 
determined  in  some  unique  and  special  way  by  relation  to 
other  standards  is  precisely  analogous  to  the  "  substance " 
that  is  now  dissolved  in  aqua  regia  and  now  made  to  pass  in 
the  form  of  current  coin,  but  cannot  be  treated  in  both  ways 
at  once.  Both  are  abstractions.  The  "gold"  is  a  name  for 
the  general  possibility  of  attaining  any  one  of  a  certain 
set  of  particular  ends  by  appropriately  co-ordinating  cer- 
tain energies,  resident  elsewhere  in  the  physical  system, 
with  those  at  present  stored  in  this  particular  "parcel  of 
matter;"  the  result  to  be  attained  depends  not  alone  upon 
the  "parcel  of  matter,"  but  also  upon  the  particular  energies 
brought  to  bear  upon  it  from  without.  Now  let  us  take  a 
type  of  conduct  which  is  sometimes  judged  good  and  some- 
times bad  Deception,  for  example,  is  such  a  type — and 

i  Cf.  SCHILLER,  Riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  chap,  vii,  §§  10-14. 


328  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

as  a  type  it  simply  stands  for  the  general  possibility  of 
furtherance  or  detriment  to  the  "energetic"  self  according 
as  it  is  determined  in  the  concrete  instance  by  ideals  of 
social  well-being  or  by  considerations  of  immediate  personal 
advantage. 

For  the  type-form  of  conduct — when  considered,  not  as 
a  type  of  mere  physical  performance,  but  as  conduct  in  the 
technical  sense  of  a  possible  purpose  of  the  self — is,  in 
the  sense  we  have  explained,  a  symbol  for  the  general  pos- 
sibility of  access  or  dissipation  of  spiritual  energy — energy 
which  must  be  set  free  by  the  bringing  to  bear  of  other 
energies  upon  it,  and  which  furthers  or  works  counter  to  the 
enlargement  and  development  of  the  self  according  to  the 
mode  of  its  co-ordination  with  other  energies  which  the  self 
has  already  turned  to  its  purposes.1  But  actual  conduct  is 
concrete  always  and  never  typical;  and  so  likewise,  we  have 
sought  to  show,  actual  "substance,"  the  objective  thing 
referred  to  in  the  factual  judgment,  is  always  concrete  and 
never  an  essence.  It  is  not  a  fixed  thing  admitting  of  a  simul- 
taneous variety  of  conflicting  determinations  and  practical 
uses,  but  absolutely  unique  and  already  determined  to  its 
unique  character  by  the  whole  assemblage  of  physical  con- 
ditions -which  affect  it  at  the  time  and  which  it  in  turn 
reacts  upon.  In  the  moral  as  in  the  physical  sphere  the 
fundamental  category  would,  on  our  present  account,  appear 
to  be  that  of  energy.  The  particular  physical  object  given 
in  judgment  is  a  concrete  realization,  in  the  form  of  a  par- 
ticular means  or  instrument,  of  that  general  possibility  of 
attaining  ends  which  the  concept  of  a  fixed  fund  of  energy, 
interpreted  as  a  logical  postulate  or  principle  of  inference, 
expresses.  The  particular  moral  or  economic  act  is  a  par- 
ticular way  in  which  the  energy  of  the  self  may  be  increased 

!  lit  would  appear  that  the  principle  of  the  conservation  of  energy  is  valid  only 
in  the  physical  sphere;  but  the  logical  significance  of  this  limitation  cannot  be 
here  discussed. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PKOCESS  329 

or  diminished.  In  both  spheres  the  reality  presented  in  the 
finished  judgment  is  objective  as  being  a  stimulus  to  the 
setting  free  of  the  energies  for  which  it  stands.  Once 
more,  then,  our  answer  to  the  objection  we  have  been  con- 
sidering must  be  that  the  object  as  the  permanent  sub- 
strate is  merely  an  abstract  symbol  standing  for  the  inde- 
terminate means  in  general  set  over  against  the  self.  Cor- 
responding to  it  we  have,  on  the  other  side,  the  concept  of 
the  "energetic"  self — the  self  that  is  purposive  in  gen- 
eral, expansive  somehow  or  other. 

The  function  of  completed  factual  judgment  in  the 
development  of  experience  is,  we  have  held,  that  of  warrant- 
ing to  the  agent  the  completed  purpose  which  his  judgment 
of  value  expresses.  This  view  calls  for  some  further  comment 
and  illustration  in  closing  the  present  division.  In  the  first 
place  the  statement  implies  that  the  conditions  which  factual 
judgment  presents  in  the  "final  survey'7  as  sanctioning  the 
purpose  have  not  determined  the  purpose,  since  prior  to  the 
determination  of  the  purpose  the  conditions  were  not,  and 
could  not  be,  so  presented.  The  question,  therefore,  natur- 
ally arises  whether  our  meaning  is  that  in  the  formation  of 
our  purposes  in  valuation  the  recognition  of  existing  con- 
ditions plays  no  part.  Our  answer  can  be  indicated  only  in 
the  barest  outline  as  follows: 

The  agent  must,  of  course,  in  an  economic  judgment-pro- 
cess, recognize  and  take  account  of  such  facts  as  the  tech- 
nical adaptability  of  the  means  he  is  proposing  to  use  to  the 
new  purpose  that  is  forming,  as  also  of  environing  con- 
ditions which  may  affect  the  success  which  he  may  meet 
with  in  applying  them.  He  must  consider  also  his  own 
physical  strength  and  qualities  of  mind  with  a  view  to  this 
same  technical  problem.  And  similarly  in  ethical  valuation, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  psychology  of  the  "empirical  ego" 


330  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

must  play  its  part.  But  the  conditions  thus  recognized  are, 
as  we  might  seek  to  show  more  in  detail,  explainable  as  the 
outcome  of  past  factual  judgment-processes,  and  on  the 
occasion  of  their  original  definition  in  the  form  in  which 
they  now  are  known  played  the  sanctioning  part  of  which 
we  have  so  often  spoken.  They  therefore  correspond  to  the 
agent's  accepted  practical  ideals,  so  that  the  control  which 
his  past  experience  exercises  over  his  present  conduct  may 
be  stated  equally  well  in  either  sort  of  terms — in  terms  of 
his  prevailing  recognized  standards,  or  in  terms  of  his 
present  knowledge  of  the  conditions  which  his  new  purpose 
must  respect.  Thus,  in  general,  the  concept  of  a  physical 
order  conditioning  the  .conduct  of  all  men  and  presented  in  a 
definite  body  of  socially  current  knowledge  is  the  logical 
correlate  of  the  moral  law  conceived  as  a  categorical  imper- 
ative prescribing  certain  types  of  conduct. 

Thus  the  error  of  regarding  the  agent's  conduct  in  a 
present  emergency  as  an  outcome  of  existing  determining 
conditions  is  logically  identical  with  the  corresponding  error 
of  the  ethical  theory  of  self-realization.  The  latter  holds 
the  logical  possibility  of  a  determinate  descriptive  ideal 
(already  realized  in  the  unchanging  Absolute  Self)  which  is 
adequate*  to  the  solution  of  all  possible  ethical  problems. 
The  former  holds  that  all  conduct  must  be  subject  to  the 
determining  force  of  external  conditions  which,  if  not  at 
present  completely  known,  are  at  least  in  theory  knowable. 
The  physical  universe  in  its  original  nebulous  state  con- 
tained the  "promise  and  potency"  of  all  that  has  been  in  the 
way  of  human  conduct  and  of  all  that  is  to  be.  Into  the 
fixed  mechanical  system  no  new  energy  can  enter  and  from 
it  none  of  the  original  fund  of  energy  can  be  lost.  This 
mechanical  theory  of  conduct  is  the  essential  basis  of  the 
hedonistic  theory  of  ethics;  and  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  show  that  Green's  criticism  of  this  latter  and  his 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  331 

own  affirmative  theory  of  the  moral  ideal  (as  also  the  cur- 
rent conventional  criticism  of  hedonism  in  the  same  tenor 
by  the  school  of  Green)  are  in  a  logical  sense  identical 
with  it.  For  the  assumption  that  conduct  is  determined 
by  existing  objective  conditions  is  precisely  the  logical  cor- 
relate of  the  concept  of  a  contentual  and  "realizable"  ideal 
moral  self.1 

We  may  now  interpret,  in  the  light  of  our  general  view 
of  the  function  of  factual  judgment,  the  concept  of  the 
"empirical  self"  referred  to  in  our  discussion  of  the  various 
types  of  sanctioning  condition  which  may  enter  into  the 
"final  survey."  The  "empirical  self"  of  psychological  sci- 
ence is  a  construction  gradually  put  together  by  psycholo- 
gist or  introspective  layman  as  an  interpretation  of  the  way 
in  which  accepted  concrete  modes  of  conduct,  in  the  deter- 
mination of  which  standards  have  been  operative,  have 
worked  out  in  practice  to  the  furtherance  or  impoverishment 
of  the  "energetic"  self.  We  have  seen  that  the  ambiguous 
presented  self  which  functions  in  the  moral  attitude  of  obe- 
dience to  authority  or  to  conscience  gives  place  in  the  atti- 
tude of  conscious  valuation  to  apprehension  of  the  "energetic" 
self,  on  the  one  hand,  and  descriptive  concepts  of  particular 
types  of  conduct,  on  the  other.  The  "empirical  self"  at  the 
same  time  makes  its  appearance  as  a  constantly  expanding 
inventory  of  the  "spiritual  resources"  which  the  "energetic" 
self  has  at  its  disposal.  These  are  the  functions  of  the  soul 
which  a  functional  psychology  shows  us  in  operation — powers 
of  attention,  strength  of  memory,  fertility  in  associative 
recall,  and  the  like — and  these  are  the  resources  where- 
with the  "energetic"  self  may  execute,  and  so  exploit  to  its 

i  That  the  assumption  mentioned  is  the  essential  basis  of  the  twin  theories  of 
associationism  in  psychology  and  hedonism  in  ethics  is  shown  by  DR.  WARNER  FITB 
in  his  article,  "The  Associational  Conception  of  Experience,"  Philosophical  Review, 
Vol.  IX,  pp.  283  ff.  Cf.  MR.  BRADLEY'S  remarks  on  the  logic  of  hedonism  in  his 
Principles  of  Logic ,  pp.  244-9. 


332  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

own  furtherance,  the  purposes  which,  in  particular  emer- 
gencies, new  end  and  recognized  standards  may  work  out 
in  co-operation.1 

VI 

In  the  foregoing  pages  we  have  consistently  used  the 
expressions  "ethical  and  economic  judgment"  and  "judg- 
ment of  valuation"  as  synonymous.  This  may  have  seemed 
to  the  reader  something  very  like  a  begging  of  the  question 
from  the  outset,  as  taking  for  granted  that  very  judgmental 
character  of  our  valuational  experience  which  it  was  the 
professed  object  of  our  discussion  to  establish.  We  are  thus 
called  upon  very  briefly  to  consider,  first  of  all,  the  relations 
which  subsist  between  the  consciousness  of  value  and  the 
process  which  we  have  described  as  that  of  valuation.  This 
will  enable  us,  in  the  second  place,  to  determine  the  logical 
function  which  belongs  to  the  consciousness  of  value  in  the 
general  economy  of  life.  The  consciousness  of  value  is  a 
perfectly  definite  and  distinctive  psychical  fact  mediated  by 
a  doubtless  highly  complex  set  of  psychical  or  ultimately 
physiological  conditions.  As  such  it  admits  of  descriptive 
analysis,  and  in  a  complete  theory  of  value  such  descriptive 
analysis  should  certainly  find  a  place.  It  would  doubtless 

iThe  "energetic  "  self  is  apparently  ME.  BKADLEY'S  fourth  "  meaning  of  self," 
the  self  as  monad  — "something  moving  parallel  with  the  life  of  a  man,  or,  rather, 
something  not  moving,  but  literally  standing  in  relation  to  his  successive  variety  " 
(Appearance  and  Reality  [1st  ed.]  p.  86,  in  chap,  ix,  "The  Meanings  of  the  Self"). 
Mr.  Bradley's  difficulty  appears  to  come  from  his  desiring  a  psychological  content  for 
what  is  essentially  a  logical  conception  —  a  confusion  (if  we  may  be  permitted  the 
remark)  which  runs  through  the  entire  chapter  to  which  we  refer  and  is  responsible 
for  the  undeniable  and  hopeless  incoherency  of  the  various  meanings  of  the  self,  as 
Mr.  Bradley  therein  expounds  them.  "  If  the  monad  stands  aloof,"  says  Mr.  Bradley, 
"either  with  no  character  at  all  or  a  private  character  apart,  then  it  may  be  a  fine 
thing  in  itself,  but  it  is  a  mere  mockery  to  call  it  the  self  of  a  man  "  (p.  87).  Surely 
this  is  to  misconstrue  and  then  find  fault  with  that  very  character  of  essential  logical 
apartness  from  any  possibility  of  determination  in  point  of  descriptive  psychological 
content  which  constitutes  the  whole  value  of  the  "energetic"  self  as  a  logical  con- 
ception stimulative  of  the  valuation -process  and  so  inevitably  of  factual  judgment. 
See  pp.  258,  259,  above.  The  reader  may  find  for  himself  in  Mr.  Bradley's  enumera- 
tion of  meanings  our  concept  of  the  empirical  self.  But  surely  the  "  energetic  "  and 
empirical  selves  would  appear  on  our  showing  to  have  no  necessary  conflict  with 
each  other. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  333 

throw  much  light  upon  the  origin  of  valuation  as  a  process, 
and  of  valuing  as  an  attitude,  and  admirably  illustrate  the 
view  of  the  function  of  the  consciousness  of  value  to  which 
a  logical  study  of  valuation  as  a  process  seems  to  lead  us. 
This  problem  in  analysis  belongs,  however,  to  psychology, 
and  therefore  lies  apart  from  our  present  purpose  ;  nor  is  it 
necessary  to  the  establishment  of  our  present  view  to  under- 
take it.  It  is  necessary  for  our  purpose  only  to  suggest,  for 
purposes  of  identification,  a  brief  description  of  the  value- 
consciousness,  and  to  indicate  its  place  in  the  process  of 
reflective  thought. 

The  consciousness  of  value  may  best  be  described,  by 
way  of  first  approximation,  in  the  language  of  the  Austrian 
economists  as  a  sense  of  the  "importance"  to  oneself  of  a 
commodity  or  defined  moral  purpose.  It  belongs  to  the 
agent's  attitude  of  survey  or  recapitulation  which  ensues 
upon  the  completion  of  the  judgment-process  and  is  mediated 
by  attention  to  the  ethical  or  economic  object  in  its  newly 
defined  character  of  specific  conduciveness  to  the  well-being 
of  the  self.  The  commodity,  in  virtue  of  its  ascertained 
physical  properties,  is  adapted  to  certain  modes  of  use  or 
consumption  which,  through  valuation  of  the  commodity, 
have  come  to  be  accepted  as  desirable.  The  moral  act 
likewise  has  been  approved  by  virtue  of  its  having  certain 
definite  sociological  tendencies,  or  being  conducive  to  the 
welfare  and  happiness  of  a  friend.  Thus  commodity  or 
moral  act,  as  the  case  may  be,  has  a  determinate  complexity 
of  meaning  which  has  been  judged  as,  in  one  sense,  expan- 
sive of  the  self,  and  the  value-consciousness  we  may  identify 
as  that  sense  of  the  valued  object's  importance  which  is 
mediated  by  recognition  of  it  as  the  bearer  of  this  complexity 
of  concrete  meaning.  The  meaning  is,  as  we  may  say, 
"condensed"  or  "compacted"  into  the  object  as  given  in 
sense-perception,  and  because  the  meaning  stands  for  ex- 


334  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

pansion  of  the  self,  the  object  in  taking  it  up  into  itself 
receives  the  character  of  importance  as  a  valued  object. 

The  sense  of  importance  thus  is  expressive  of  an  attitude 
upon  the  agent's  part.  The  concrete  meanings  which  make 
up  the  content  of  the  object's  importance  would  inevitably, 
if  left  to  themselves,  prompt  overt  action.  The  commodity 
would  forthwith  be  applied  to  its  new  use  or  the  moral  act 
would  be  performed.  The  self  would,  as  we  may  express  it, 
possess  itself  of  the  spiritual  energies  resident  in  the  chosen 
purpose.  The  attitude  of  survey,  however,  inhibits  this  action 
of  the  self  and  the  sense  of  importance  is  the  resulting  emo- 
tional apprehension  of  the  value  of  the  object  hereby  brought 
to  recognition.  Now,  it  should  be  carefully  observed  that  the 
particular  concrete  emotions  appropriate  to  the  details  of 
the  valued  purpose  are  not  what  we  here  intend.  The  pur- 
pose may  spring  from  some  impulse  of  self-interest,  hatred, 
patriotism,  or  love,  and  the  psychical  material  of  its  pres- 
entation during  the  agent's  survey  will  be  the  varied  complex 
of  qualitative  emotion  that  comes  from  inhibition  of  the 
detailed  activities  which  make  up  the  purpose  as  a  whole. 
So  also  the  apprehension  of  the  physical  object  of  economic 
valuation  is  largely,  if  not  altogether,  emotional  in  its  psychi- 
cal constitution.  Psychologically  these  emotions  are  the 
purpose — they  are  the  "stuff"  of  which  the  purpose  as  a 
psychical  fact  occurring  in  time  is  made.  But  we  must  bear 
in  mind  that  it  is  not  the  purpose  as  a  psychical  fact  that  is 
the  object  of  the  agent's  valuing — any  more  than  is  the  tool 
with  which  one  cuts  perceived  as  a  molecular  mass  or  as  an 
aggregation  of  centers  of  ether-stress.  As  a  cognized  object  of 
value  the  purpose  is,  in  our  schematic  terminology,  a  source  of 
energy  for  the  increase  of  the  self,  and  thus  the  conscious- 
ness of  value  is  the  perfectly  specific  emotion  arising  from 
restraint  put  upon  the  self  in  its  movement  of  appropriation 
of  this  energy.  In  contrast  with  the  concrete  emotions  which 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  335 

are  the  substance  of  the  purpose  as  presented,  the  conscious- 
ness of  value  may  be  called  a  "formal"  emotion  or  the  emotion 
of  a  typical  reflective  attitude. 

The  valuing  attitude  we  may  then  describe  as  that  of 
"resolution"  on  the  part  of  the  self  to  adhere  to  the  finished 
purpose  which  it  now  surveys,  with  a  view  to  exploitation  of 
the  purpose.  The  connection  between  the  valuation -pro- 
cess and  the  consciousness  of  value  may  be  stated  thus:  The 
valuation -process  works  out  (and  necessarily  in  cognitive, 
objective  terms)  the  purpose  which  is  valued  in  the  agent's 
survey.  But  this  development  of  the  purpose  is  at  the  same 
time  determination  of  the  "energetic"  self  to  acceptance  of 
the  purpose  that  shall  be  worked  out.  Thus  the  valuation- 
process  is  the  source  of  the  consciousness  of  value  in  the 
twofold  way  (1)  of  defining  the  object  valued,  and  (2)  of 
determining  the  self  to  the  attitude  of  resolution  to  adhere 
to  it  and  exploit  it.1  The  consciousness  of  value  is  the  appre- 
hension of  an  object  in  its  complete  functional  character  as 
a  factor  in  experience. 

The  function  of  the  consciousness  of  value  must  now  be 
very  briefly  considered.  The  phenomenon  is  a  striking  one, 
and  apparently,  as  the  economists  especially  have  insisted,  of 
much  practical  importance  in  the  conduct  of  life.2  And  yet  on 
our  account  of  the  phenomenon,  as  it  may  appear,  the  prob- 
lem of  assigning  to  it  a  function  must  be,  to  say  the  least, 
difficult.  For  the  consciousness  of  value  is,  we  have  held, 
emotional,  and,  on  the  conception  of  emotion  in  general  which 
we  have  taken  for  granted  throughout  our  present  discussion, 
this  mode  of  being  conscious  is  merely  a  reflex  of  a  state  of 
tension  in  activity.  As  such  it  merely  reports  in  conscious- 
ness a  process  of  motor  co-ordination  already  going  on  and  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  can  contribute  nothing  to  the  outcome. 

i  In  the  first  of  these  inseparable  aspects  valuation  is  determinative  of  Right- 
ness  and  Wrongness;  in  the  second  it  presents  the  object  as  Good  or  Bad.  See  p.  259, 
above. 

2 See,  for  example,  WIESEE,  Natural  Value  (Eng.  trans.),  p.  17. 


336  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

Now  if  it  were  in  a  direct  way  as  immediately  felt  emotion 
that  the  consciousness  of  value  must  be  functional  if  func- 
tional at  all,  then  the  problem  might  well  be  given  up;  but 
it  would  be  a  serious  blunder  to  conceive  the  problem  in 
this  strictly  psychological  way.  A  logical  statement  of  the 
problem  would  raise  a  different  issue — not  the  question  of 
whether  emotion  as  emotion  can  in  any  sense  be  functional 
in  experience,  but  whether  the  consciousness  of  value  and 
emotion  in  general  may  not  receive  reflective  interpretation 
and  thereby,  becoming  objective,  play  a  part  as  a  factor  in 
subsequent  valuation- processes.  Indeed,  the  psychological 
statement  of  the  problem  misses  the  entire  point  at  issue 
and  leads  directly  to  the  wholly  irrelevant  general  problem  of 
whether  any  mode  of  consciousness  whatever  can,  as  con- 
sciousness, put  forth  energy  and  be  a  factor  in  controlling 
conduct.  The  present  problem  is  properly  a  logical  one. 
What  is  the  agent's  apprehension  of  the  matter?  In  his 
subsequent  reflective  processes  of  valuation  does  the  con- 
sciousness of  value,  which  was  a  feature  of  the  survey  on  a 
past  occasion,  receive  recognition  in  any  way  and  so  play  a 
part?  This  is  simply  a  question  of  fact  and  clearly,  as  a 
question  relating  to  the  logical  content  of  the  agent's  re- 
flective process,  has  no  connection  with  or  interest  in  the 
problem  of  a  possible  dynamic  efficacy  of  consciousness  as 
such.  The  question  properly  is  logical,  not  psychological  or 
metaphysical. 

Thus  stated,  then,  the  problem  seems  to  admit  of  answer 
— and  along  the  line  already  suggested  in  our  account  of 
economic  valuation.1  Recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  con- 
sciousness of  value  was  experienced  in  the  survey  of  a  certain 
purpose  on  an  earlier  occasion  confirms  this  purpose,  holding 
the  means,  in  an  economic  situation,  to  their  appointed  use 
and  strengthening  adherence  to  the  standard  in  the  ethical 

i  See  pp.  307-12  above. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PEOCESS  337 

case.  This  recognition  serves  as  stimulus  to  a  reproduction, 
in  memory,  of  the  cognitive  details  of  the  earlier  survey, 
and  so  in  the  ideal  case  to  a  more  or  less  complete  and 
recognizably  adequate  reinstatement  of  the  earlier  valuing 
attitude,  and  so  to  a  reinstatement  of  the  consciousness  of 
value  itself.  The  result  is  a  strengthening  of  the  established 
valuation,  a  more  efficacious  control  of  the  new  end  claiming 
recognition,  and  an  assured  measure  of  continuity  of  ethical 
development  from  the  old  valuation  to  the  new.  The  function 
thus  assigned  to  the  consciousness  of  value  finds  abundant 
illustration  elsewhere  in  the  field  of  emotion.  The  stated 
festivals  of  antiquity  commemorative  of  regularly  recurrent 
phases  of  agricultural  and  pastoral  life,  as  also  the  festivals 
in  observance  of  signal  events  in  the  private  and  political 
life  of  the  individual,  would  appear  to  find,  more  or  less  dis- 
tinctly, here  their  explanation.  These  festivals  must  have 
been  prompted  by  a  more  or  less  conscious  recognition  of  the 
social  value  inherent  in  the  important  functions  making  up 
the  life  of  the  community,  and  of  the  individual  citizen  as  a 
member  of  the  community  and  as  an  individual.  They 
secured  the  end  of  a  sustained  and  enhanced  interest  in 
these  normal  functions  by  effecting,  through  a  symbolic 
reproduction  of  these,  an  intensified  and  glorified  experience 
of  the  emotional  meaning  normally  and  inherently  belonging 
to  them.1  In  the  same  way  the  rites  of  the  religious  cults  of 
Greece,  not  to  mention  kindred  phenomena  so  abundantly  to 
be  found  in  lower  civilizations  as  well  as  in  our  own,  served 
to  fortify  the  individual  in  a  certain  consistent  and  salutary 
course  of  institutional  and  private  life.2 

1  The  illustration,  as  also  the  general  principle  which  it  here  is  used  to  illus- 
trate, was  suggested  some  years  since  by  Professor  G.  H.  Mead  in  a  lecture  course  on 
the  "  History  of  Psychology,"  which  the  writer  had  the  advantage  of  attending. 

2  The  conservative  function  of  valuation  may  be  further  illustrated  by  reference 
to  the  well-known  principle  of  marginal  utility  of  which  we  have  already  made  men- 
tion (p.  307  above),  and  which  has  played  so  great  a  part  in  modern  economic 
theory.    The  value  of  the  unit  quantity  of  a  stock  of  any  commodity  is,  according  to 


338  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

It  has  been  taken  for  granted  throughout  that  there  are 
but  two  forms  of  valuation -process,  the  ethical  and  the  eco- 
nomic. The  reason  for  this  limitation  may  already  be  suffi- 
ciently apparent,  but  it  will  further  illustrate  our  general 
conception  of  the  valuation -process  briefly  to  indicate  it  in 
detail.  What  shall  be  said,  for  example,  of  the  common  use 
of  the  term  "value"  in  such  expressions  as  the  "value  of 
life,"  the  "emotional  value"  of  an  object  or  a  moral  act,  the 
"natural  value"  of  a  type  of  impulsive  activity?  In  these 
uses  of  the  word  the  reference  is  apparently  to  one's  own 
incommunicable  inner  experience  of  living,  of  perception  of 
the  object,  or  of  the  impulse,  which  cannot  be  suggested  to 
any  other  person  who  has  not  himself  had  the  experience. 
My  pleasure,  my  color-sensation  in  its  affective  aspect,  my 
emotion,  are  inner  and  subjective,  and  I  distinguish  them  by 
such  expressions  as  the  above  from  the  visible,  tangible  object 
to  which  I  ascribe  them  as  constituting  its  immediate  or 
natural  value  to  me.  This  broader  use  of  the  term  "value" 
has  not  found  recognition  in  the  foregoing  pages,  and  it 
requires  here  a  word  of  comment.  So  long  as  these  phases 
of  the  experience  of  the  object  are  not  recognized  as  separable 
in  thought  from  the  object  viewed  as  an  external  condition 
or  means,  they  would  apparently  be  better  characterized  in 
some  other  way.  If,  however,  they  are  so  recognized,  and  are 
thereby  taken  as  determinative  of  the  agent's  practical  atti- 
tude toward  the  thing,  we  have  merely  our  typical  situation 
of  ethical  valuation  of  some  implied  purpose  as  conducive  to 
the  self  and  economic  valuation  of  the  means  as  requisites  for 

this  principle,  measured  by  the  least  important  single  use  in  the  schedule  of  uses  to 
which  the  stock  as  a  whole  is  to  be  applied.  Manifestly,  then,  adherence  to  this 
valuation  placed  upon  the  unit  quantity  is  in  so  far  conservative  of  the  whole  sched- 
ule and  the  marginal  value  is  a  "  short-hand  "  symbol  expressive  of  the  value  of  the 
whole  complex  purpose  presented  in  the  schedule.  Moreover,  the  increase  of  mar- 
ginal value  concurrently  with  diminution  of  the  stock  through  consumption,  loss, 
or  reapplication  is  not  indicative  so  much  of  a  change  of  purpose  as  of  determina- 
tion to  adhere  to  so  much  of  the  original  program  of  consumption  as  may  still  be 
possible  of  attainment  with  the  depleted  supply  of  the  commodity. 


VALUATION  AS  A  LOGICAL  PROCESS  339 

execution  of  the  purpose.  Our  general  criterion  for  the  pro- 
priety of  terming  any  mode  of  consciousness  the  value  of  an 
object  must  be  that  it  shall  perform  a  logical  function  and 
not  simply  be  referred  to  in  its  aspect  of  psychical  fact. 
The  feeling  or  emotion,  or  whatever  the  mode  of  conscious- 
ness in  question  may  be,  must  play  the  recognized  part,  in 
the  agent's  survey  of  the  situation,  of  prompting  and  sup- 
porting a  definite  practical  attitude  with  reference  to  the 
object.  If,  in  short,  the  experience  in  question  enters  in 
any  way  into  a  conscious  purpose  of  the  agent,  it  may  properly 
be  termed  a  value.1 

Esthetic  value  also  has  not  been  recognized,  and  for  the 
opposite  reason.  The  sense  of  beauty  would  appear  to  be  a 
correlate  of  relatively  perfect  attained  adjustment  between 
the  agent  and  his  natural  environment  or  the  conditions  sug- 
gested more  or  less  impressively  by  the  work  of  art.  There 
must,  indeed,  be  present  in  the  aesthetic  experience  an  element 
of  unsatisfied  curiosity  sufficient  to  stimulate  an  interest  in 
the  changing  or  diverse  aspects  of  the  beautiful  object,  but 
this  must  not  be  sufficient  to  prompt  reflective  judgment  of 
the  details  presented.  On  the  whole,  the  aesthetic  experience 
would  appear  to  be  essentially  post-judgmental  and  appre- 
ciative. It  comes  on  the  particular  occasion,  not  as  the 
result  of  a  judgment-process  of  the  valuational  type,  but  as  an 
immediate  appreciation.  As  an  immediate  appreciation  it 
has  no  logical  function  and  on  our  principles  must  be  denied 
the  name  of  value.  Our  standpoint  must  be  that  of  the 
experiencing  individual.  The  aesthetic  experience  as  a  type 
may  well  be  a  development  out  of  the  artistic  and  so  find 

i  Thus  except  on  this  condition  we  should  deny  the  propriety  of  speaking  of  the 
value  of  a  friend  or  of  a  memento  or  sacred  relic.  The  purpose  of  accurate  definition 
of  the  function  of  such  objects  as  these  in  the  attainment  of  one's  ends  is  foreign  to 
the  proper  attitude  of  loving,  prizing,  or  venerating  them.  We  may  ethically  value 
the  act  of  sacrifice  for  a  friend  or  of  solicitous  care  of  the  memento,but  the  object  of 
our  sacrifice  or  solicitude  has  simply  the  direct  or  immediate  "qualitative  "emotional 
character  appropriate  to  the  kinds  of  activity  to  which  it  is  the  adequate  stimulus. 


340  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

its  ultimate  explanation  in  the  psychology  of  man's 
primitive  technological  occupations  in  the  ordinary  course  of 
life.  It  is,  as  we  have  said,  of  the  post-judgmental  type, 
and  so  may  very  probably  be  but  the  cumulative  outcome 
of  closer  and  closer  approximations  along  certain  lines  to  a 
perfected  adjustment  with  the  conditions  of  life.  It  may 
thus  have  its  origin  in  past  processes  of  the  reflective  valua- 
tional  type.  Nevertheless,  viewed  in  the  light  of  its  actual 
present  character  and  status  in  experience,  the  aesthetic  must 
be  excluded  from  the  sphere  of  values. 

Thus  the  realms  of  fact  and  value  are  both  real,  but  that 
of  value  is  logically  .prior  and  so  the  "more  real."  The 
realm  of  fact  is  that  of  conditions  warranting  the  purposes  of 
the  self;  as  a  separate  order,  complete  and  absolute  in 
itself,  it  is  an  abstraction  that  has  forgotten  the  reason  for 
which  it  was  made.  Reality  in  the  logical  sense  is  that 
which  furthers  the  development  of  the  self.  The  purpose 
that  falls  short  of  its  promise  in  this  regard  is  unreal — not, 
indeed,  in  the  psychological  sense  that  it  never  existed  in 
imagination,  but  in  the  logical  sense  that  it  is  no  longer 
valued.  Within  the  inclusive  realm  of  reality  the  realm  of 
fact  is  that  of  the  means  which  serve  the  concrete  purposes 
which  the  self  accepts.  The  completed  purpose,  however, 
is  not  means,  since  still  behind  and  beyond  it  there  can  be 
no  other  concrete  valued  purpose  which  it  can  serve.  Nor 
is  it  an  ultimate  end,  since  in  its  character  of  accepted  and 
valued  end  the  self  adheres  to  it,  and  it  therefore  cannot 
express  the  whole  purpose  of  the  self  to  whose  unspecifiable 
fulness  and  increase  of  activity  it  is  but  a  temporary  proba- 
tional  contributor.  It  is  rather  in  the  nature  of  a  for- 
mula or  method  of  behavior  to  which  the  self  ascribes  reality 
by  recognizing  and  accepting  it  as  its  own. 


XI 

SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OP  PURPOSE 
INTBODUCTOBY 

WHENEVEB  and  wherever  it  was  discovered  that  the  con- 
tent of  experience  as  given  in  immediate  perception  could 
be  reconstructed  through  ideas,  then  and  there  began  to 
emerge  such  questions  as  these:  What  is  the  significance  of 
this  reconstructive  power?  What  is  the  relation  between  it 
and  the  immediate  experience  ?  What  is  the  relative  value 
of  each  in  experience  as  a  whole  ?  What  is  their  relation  to 
truth  and  error?  If  thinking  leads  to  truth,  and  thought 
must  yet  get  its  material  from  perception,  how  then  shall 
the  product  of  thought  escape  infection  from  the  material? 
On  the  other  hand,  if  truth  is  to  be  found  in  the  immediate 
experience,  can  it  here  be  preserved  from  the  blighting  effects 
of  thought  ?  For  so  insistent  and  pervasive  is  this  activity  of 
thought  that  it  appears  to  penetrate  into  the  sanctum  of 
perception  itself.  Turning  to  a  third  possibility,  if  it 
should  be  found  that  truth  and  error  are  concerned  with 
both — that  they  are  products  of  the  combined  activity  of 
perception  and  reflection  —  then  just  what  does  each  do? 
And  what  in  their  operations  marks  the  difference  between 
truth  and  error?  Or  still  again,  if  truth  and  error  cannot 
be  found  in  the  operations  of  perception  and  reflection  as 
such,  then  they  must  be  located  in  the  relation  of  these 
processes  to  something  else.  If  so,  what  is  this  something 
else?  Out  of  such  questions  as  these  is  logic  born. 

There  may  be  those  who  will  object  to  some  of  these 
questions  as  "logical"  problems  —  those  who  would  limit 

341 


342  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

logic  to  a  description  of  the  forms  and  processes  of  recon- 
struction, relegating  the  question  of  the  criterion  of  truth 
and  error  to  "epistemology."  This  objection  we  must  here 
dismiss  summarily  by  saying  that,  by  whatever  name  it  is 
called,  a  treatment  of  the  forms  and  processes  of  thought 
must  deal  with  the  criterion  of  truth  and  error,  since  these 
different  "forms"  are  just  those  which  thought  assumes  in 
attempting  to  reach  truth  under  different  conditions. 

Certainly  in  the  beginning  the  Greeks  regarded  their 
newly  discovered  power  of  thought  as  anything  but  formal. 
Indeed,  it  soon  became  so  "substantial "  that  it  was  regarded 
as  simply  a  new  world  of  fact,  of  existence  alongside  of,  or 
rather  above,  the  world  of  perception.  But  Socrates  hailed 
ideas  as  deliverers  from  the  contradictions  and  paradoxes 
into  which  experience  interpreted  in  terms  of  immediate 
sense -perception  had  fallen.  In  the  concept  Socrates 
found  a  solution  for  the  then  pressing  problems  of  social  life. 
The  Socratic  universal  is  not  a  mere  empty  form  which 
thought  imposes  upon  the  world.  It  is  something  which 
thought  creates  in  order  that  a  life  of  social  interaction  and 
reciprocity  may  go  on.  This  need  not  mean  that  the  Greeks 
were  reflectively  conscious  of  this,  but  that  this  was  the  way 
the  concept  was  actually  used  and  developed  by  Socrates. 

In  attempting  to  formulate  the  relation  between  this  new 
world  of  ideas  and  immediate  sense-experience,  Plato  con- 
structed his  scheme  of  substantiation  and  participation.  The 
Platonic  doctrine  of  substantiation  and  participation  is  an 
expression  of  the  conviction  that  anything  so  valuable  as 
Socrates  had  shown  ideas  to  be  could  not  be  merely  formal 
or  unreal.  Up  to  the  discovery  of  these  ideas  reality  lay 
in  the  "substances"  of  perception.  Hence  in  order  to  have 
that  reality  to  which  their  worth,  their  value  in  life,  entitled 
them,  the  ideas  must  be  substantiated. 

This  introduction  of  the  newly  discovered  ideas  into  the 
world  of  substances  and  reality  wrought,  of  course,  a  change 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         343 

in  the  conception  of  the  latter — a  change  which  has  well- 
nigh  dominated  the  entire  philosophic  development  ever 
since.  Let  us  recall  that  the  aim  of  Socrates  was  to  find 
something  that  would  prevent  society  from  going  to  pieces 
under  the  influence  of  the  disintegrating  conception  of  ex- 
perience as  a  mere  flux  of  given  immediate  content.  Now, 
in  the  concepts  Socrates  discovered  the  basis  for  just  this 
much-needed  wholeness  and  stability.  Moreover,  the  fact 
that  unity  and  stability  were  the  actual  social  needs  of  the 
hour  led  not  only  to  the  concepts  which  furnished  them 
being  conceived  as  substantial  and  real,  but  to  their  being 
regarded  as  a  higher  type  of  reality,  as  "more  real"  than  the 
given,  immediate  experiences  of  perception.  They  were 
higher  and  more  real  because,  just  then,  they  answered  the 
pressing  social  need. 

The  ideas  supplied  this  unity  because  they  furnished 
ends,  purposes,  to  the  given  material  of  perception.  The 
given  is  now  given  for  something;  for  something  more, 
too,  than  mere  contemplation.  Socrates  also  showed,  by 
the  most  acute  analysis,  that  the  content  of  these  ends, 
these  purposes,  was  social  through  and  through. 

From  the  ethical  standpoint  this  teleological  character  of 
the  idea  is  clearly  recognized.  But  as  "real,"  the  ideas  must 
be  stated  in  the  metaphysical  terms  of  substance  and  attri- 
bute. Here  the  social  need  is  abstracted  from  and  lost  to 
sight.  The  fundamental  attributes  of  the  ideas  are  now  a 
metaphysical  unity  and  stability.  Hence  unity  and  stability, 
wholeness  and  completeness,"  are  the  very  essence  of  reality, 
while  multiplicity  and  change  constitute  the  nature  of  appear- 
ance. Thus  does  Plato's  reality  become,  as  Windelband  says, 
"an  immaterial  eleaticism  which  seeks  true  being  in  the 
ideas  without  troubling  itself  about  the  world  of  generation 
and  occurrence  which  it  leaves  to  perception  and  opinion."1 

Now  it  is  the  momentum  of  this  conception  of  reality  as 

i  History  of  Philosophy  (TUFT'S  translation),  p.  117. 


344  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

a  stable  and  complete  system  of  absolute  ideas,  the  develop- 
ment of  which  we  have  just  roughly  sketched,  that  is  so 
important  historically.  Why  this  conception  of  reality, 
which  apparently  grew  out  of  a  particular  historical  situa- 
tion, should  have  dominated  philosophic  theory  for  over  two 
thousand  years  appears  at  first  somewhat  puzzling.  Those 
who  still  hold  and  defend  it  will  of  course  say  that  this  sur- 
vival is  evidence  of  its  validity.  But,  after  all,  our  human 
world  may  be  yet  very  young.  It  may  be  that  "a  thousand 
years  are  but  as  yesterday."  At  any  rate  philosophy  has 
never  been  in  a  hurry  to  reconstruct  conceptions  which 
served  their  day  and  generation  with  such  distinction  as  did 
the  Platonic  conception  of  reality.  And  this  is  true  to  the 
evolutionary  instinct  that  experience  has  only  its  own  prod- 
ucts as  material  for  further  construction.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  principle  of  evolution  with  equal  force  demands 
that  only  as  material,  not  as  final  forms  of  experience,  shall 
these  products  continue.  It  may  be  that  philosophy  has 
not  yet  taken  the  conception  of  evolution  quite  seriously. 
At  all  events  it  is  certain  that  long  after  it  has  been  found 
that,  instead  of  being  eternal  and  complete,  the  concept 
undergoes  change,  that  it  has  simply  the  stability  and  whole- 
ness demanded  by  a  particular  and  concrete  situation;  after 
it  has  been  discovered,  in  other  words,  that  the  stability  and 
wholeness,  instead  of  attaching  to  the  content  of  an  idea,  are 
simply  the  functions  of  any  content  used  as  a  purpose  — 
after  all  this  has  been  accepted  in  psychology,  the  concep- 
tion of  truth  and  reality  which  arose  under  an  entirely 
different  conception  of  the  nature  of  thought  still  survives. 
This  change  in  the  conception  of  the  character  of  the 
ideas,  with  no  corresponding  change  in  the  conception  of 
reality,  marks  the  divorce  of  thought  and  reality  and  the 
rise  of  the  epistemological  problem.  Let  us  recall  that 
in  Plato  the  relation  between  the  higher  and  ultimate 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         345 

reality,  as  constituted  by  the  complete  and  "  Eternal  Ideas," 
and  the  lower  reality  of  perception,  is  that  of  arche- 
type and  ectype.  Perceptions  attempt  to  imitate  and  copy 
the  ideas.  Now,  when  the  ideas  are  found  to  be  changing, 
and  when  further  the  interpenetration  of  perception  and  con- 
ception is  discovered,  reality  as  fixed  and  complete  must  be 
located  elsewhere.  And  just  as  in  the  old  system  it  was  the 
business  of  perception  to  imitate  the  "Eternal  Ideas,"  so  here 
it  is  still  assumed  that  thought  is  to  imitate  the  reality  wher- 
ever now  it  is  to  be  located.  And  as  regards  the  matter  of 
location,  the  old  conception  is  not  abandoned.  The  elder 
Plato  is  mighty  yet.  Reality  must  still  be  a  completed 
system  of  fixed  and  eternal  "things  in  themselves,"  "rela- 
tions," or  "noumena"  of  some  sort  which  our  ideas,  now 
constituted  by  both  perception  and  conceptional  processes, 
are  still  to  "imitate,"  "copy,"  "reflect,"  "represent,"  or  at 
least  "symbolize"  in  some  fashion. 

From  this  point  on,  then,  thought  has  two  functions :  one, 
to  help  experience  meet  and  reorganize  into  itself  the  results 
of  its  own  past  activity ;  the  other,  to  reflect  or  represent  in 
some  sense  the  absolute  system  of  reality.  For  a  very  long 
time  the  latter  has  continued  to  constitute  the  logical  prob- 
lem, the  former  being  relegated  to  the  realm  of  psychology. 

But  this  discovery  of  the  reconstructive  function  of  the 
idea  and  its  assignment  to  the  jurisdiction  of  psychology  did 
not  leave  logic  where  it  was  before,  nor  did  it  lighten  its 
task.  Logic  could  not  shut  its  eyes  to  this  "psychological" 
character  of  the  idea.1  Indeed,  logic  had  to  take  the  idea 
as  psychology  described  it,  then  do  the  best  it  could  with  it 
for  its  purpose. 

The  embarrassment  of  logic  by  this  reconstructive  char- 

i  Cf.  PROFESSOR  J.  R.  ANGELA'S  article,  "Relations  of  Structural  and  Functional 
Psychology  to  Philosophy,"  Decennial  Publications  of  the  University  of  Chicago, 
Vol.  Ill,  pp.  10-12;  also  Philosophical  Review,  Vol.  XII,  No.  3.  Cf.  also  MB.  SCHIL- 
LER'S essay  on  "Axioms  as  Postulates"  in  Personal  Idealism. 


346  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

acter  of  the  idea  even  Aristotle  discovered  to  some  extent  in 
the  relation  of  the  Platonic  perceptions  to  the  eternal  ideas. 
He  found  great  difficulty  in  getting  a  flowing  stream  of  con- 
sciousness to  imitate  or  even  symbolize  an  eternally  fixed 
and  completed  reality.  And  since  we  have  discovered,  in 
addition,  that  the  idea  is  so  palpably  a  reconstructive  activ- 
ity, the  difficulties  have  not  diminished. 

In  such  a  situation  it  could  only  be  a  question  of  time 
until  solutions  of  the  problem  should  be  sought  by  attempt- 
ing to  bring  together  these  two  functions  of  the  idea.  Per- 
haps after  all  the  representation  of  objects  in  an  absolute 
system  is  involved  in  the  reconstruction  of  our  experience. 
Or  perhaps  what  appears  as  reconstructions  of  our  experi- 
ence— as  desiring,  struggling,  deliberating,  choosing,  will- 
ing, as  sorrows  and  joys,  failures  and  triumphs — are  but 
the  machinery  by  which  the  absolute  system  is  repre- 
sented. At  any  rate,  these  two  functions  surely  cannot  be 
regarded  as  belonging  to  the  idea  as  color  and  form  belong 
to  a  stone.  We  should  never  be  satisfied  with  such  a  brute 
dualism  as  this. 

Without  any  further  historical  sketch  of  attempts  at  this 
synthesis,  I  desire  to  pass  at  once  to  a  consideration  of 
what  I  am  sure  everyone  will  agree  must  stand  as  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  and  in  every  way  notable  efforts  in  this 
direction — Mr.  Eoyce's  Aberdeen  lectures  on  "The  World 
and  the  Individual."  It  is  the  purpose  here  to  examine 
that  part  of  these  lectures,  and  it  is  the  heart  of  the  whole 
matter,  in  which  the  key  to  the  solution  of  the  problem 
of  the  relation  between  ideas  and  reality  is  sought  precisely 
in  the  purposive  character  of  the  idea.  This  will  be  found 
especially  in  the  "Introduction"  and  in  the  chapter  on 
"Internal  and  External  Meaning  of  Ideas."  1 

1  From  this  point  on  this  paper  is  an  expansion  of  some  paragraphs,  pp.  11-13,  in 
an  article  on  "Existence,  Meaning,  and  Reality,"  printed  from  Vol.  Ill  of  the  First 
Series  of  the  Decennial  Publications  of  the  University  of  Chicago. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         347 

I.     THE  PUEPOSIVE  CHARACTER  OF  IDEAS 

With  his  unerring  sense  for  fundamentals,  Mr.  Royce 
begins  by  telling  us  that  the  first  thing  called  for  by  the 
problem  of  the  relation  of  ideas  to  reality  is  a  discussion  of 
the  nature  of  ideas.  Here  Mr.  Royce  says  he  shall  "be 
guided  by  certain  psychological  analyses  of  the  mere  con- 
tents of  our  consciousness,  which  have  become  prominent  in 
recent  discussion."  1 

Your  intelligent  ideas  of  things  never  consist  of  mere  imagery 
of  the  thing,  but  always  involve  a  consciousness  of  how  you  pro- 
pose to  act  toward  the  thing  of  which  you  have  ideas Com- 
plex scientific  ideas  viewed  as  to  their  conscious  significance  are,  as 
Professor  Stout  has  well  said,  plans  of  action,  ways  of  constructing 

the  object  of  your  scientific  consciousness By  the  word  idea, 

then,  as  we  shall  use  it,  when,  after  having  criticised  opposing 
theory,  we  come  to  state  in  these  lectures  our  own  thesis,  I  shall 
mean  in  the  end  any  state  of  consciousness,  whether  simple  or 
complex,  which  when  present  is  then  and  there  viewed  as  at  least 
a  partial  expression,  or  embodiment  of  a  single  conscious  purpose. 
....  In  brief,  an  idea  in  my  present  definition  may,  and  in  fact 
always  does,  if  you  please,  appear  to  be  representative  of  a  fact 
existent  beyond  itself.  But  the  primary  character  which  makes  it 
an  idea  is  not  its  representative  character,  is  not  its  vicarious 
assumption  of  the  responsibility  of  standing  for  a  being  beyond 
itself,  but  is  its  inner  character  as  relatively  fulfilling  the  purpose, 
that  is  as  presenting  the  partial  fulfilment  of  the  purpose  which  is 
in  the  consciousness  of  the  moment  wherein  the  idea  takes  place.2 
....  Now  this  purpose,  just  in  so  far  as  it  gets  a  present  con- 
scious embodiment  in  the  contents,  and  in  the  form  of  the  complex 
state  called  the  idea,  constitutes  what  I  shall  hereafter  call  the 
internal  meaning  of  the  idea.3  ....  But  ideas  often  seem  to  have 
a  meaning;  yes,  as  one  must  add,  finite  ideas  always  undertake 
or  appear  to  have  a  meaning  that  is  not  exhausted  by  this  con- 
scious internal  meaning  presented  and  relatively  fulfilled  at  the 
moment  when  the  idea  is  there  for  our  finite  view.  The  melody 
sung,  the  artists'  idea,  the  thought  of  your  absent  friend,  a  thought 
on  which  you  love  to  dwell,  all  these  not  merely  have  their  obvious 

1  P.  22.  2  Pp.  22,  23 ;  italics  mine.  3  p.  25. 


348  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

internal  meaning  as  meeting  a  conscious  purpose  by  their  very 
presence,  but  also  they  at  least  appear  to  have  that  other  sort  of 
meaning;  that  reference  beyond  themselves  to  objects,  that  cogni- 
tive relation  to  outer  facts,  that  attempted  correspondence  with 
outer  facts,  which  many  accounts  of  our  ideas  regard  as  their  pri- 
mary inexplicable  and  ultimate  character.  I  call  this  second,  and 
for  me  still  problematic,  and  derived  aspect  of  the  nature  of  ideas, 
their  apparently  external  meaning.1 

From  all  this  it  is  quite  evident  that  Mr.  Royce  accepts 
and  welcomes  the  results  of  the  work  of  modern  psychology 
on  the  nature  of  the  idea.  The  difficulty  will  come  in 
making  the  connection  between  these  accepted  results  and 
the  Platonic  conception  of  ultimate  reality  as  stated  in  the 
following : 

To  be  means  simply  to  express,  to  embody  the  complete  internal 
meaning  of  a  certain  absolute  system  of  ideas.  A  system,  more- 
over, which  is  genuinely  implied  in  the  true  internal  meaning  or 
purpose  of  every  finite  idea,  however  fragmentary.2 

It  may  be  well  to  note  here  in  passing  that,  notwith- 
standing the  avowed  subordination  here  of  the  representative 
to  the  reconstructive  character  of  the  ideas,  the  former 
becomes  very  important  in  the  chapter  on  the  relation  of 
internal  to  external  meaning,  where  the  problem  of  truth 
and  error  is  considered. 

In  this  account  of  the  two  meanings  of  the  idea,  which  I 
have  tried  to  state  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  author's  own 
words,  there  appear  some  conceptions  of  idea,  of  purpose, 
and  of  their  relation  to  each  other,  that  play  an  important 
part  in  the  further  treatment  and  in  determining  the  final 
outcome.  In  the  description  of  the  internal  meaning  there 
appear  to  be  two  quite  different  conceptions  of  the  relation 
of  idea  to  purpose.  One  regards  the  idea  as  itself  consti- 
tuting the  purpose  or  plan  of  action ;  the  other  describes  the 
idea  as  "the  partial  fulfilment"  of  the  purpose.  (1)  "Complex 

1  P.  26.  a  p.  36 ;  italics  mine. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OP  PUBPOSE         349 

scientific  ideas,  viewed  as  to  their  conscious  significance,  are, 
as  Professor  Stout  has  well  said,  plans  of  action."  (2)  "You 
sing  to  yourself  a  melody ;  you  are  then  and  there  conscious 
that  the  melody,  as  you  hear  yourself  singing  it,  partially 
fulfils  and  embodies  a  purpose."1  When  we  come  to  the 
problem  of  the  relation  between  the  internal  and  external 
meaning,  we  shall  find  that  the  idea  as  internal  meaning 
comes  into  a  third  relation  to  purpose,  viz.,  that  of  having 
the  further  purpose  to  agree  or  correspond  to  the  external 
meaning.  "Is  the  correspondence  reached  between  idea  and 
object  the  precise  correspondence  that  the  idea  itself  intended  ? 

If  it  is,  the  idea  is  true Thus  it  is  not  mere 

agreement,  but  intended  agreement,  that  constitutes  truth."2 
Thus  the  idea  is  (1)  the  purpose,  (2)  the  partial  fulfilment 
of  the  purpose,  and  (3)  has  a  further  purpose — to  correspond 
to  an  object  in  the  "  absolute  system  of  ideas." 

The  fir.st  statement  of  the  internal  meaning  as  constitut- 
ing the  plan  or  purpose  is,  I  take  it,  the  conception  of  the 
internal  meaning  as  an  ideal  construction  which  gives  a  work- 
ing form,  a  definition  to  the  "indefinite  sort  of  restlessness  "and 
blind  feeling  of  dissatisfaction  out  of  which  the  need  of  and 
demand  for  thought  arises.3  This  accords  with  the  scientific 
conception  of  the  idea  as  a  working  hypothesis.  If  this 
interpretation  of  idea  were  steadily  followed  throughout,  it  is 
difficult  to  see  how  it  could  fail  to  lead  to  a  conception  of 
reality  quite  different  from  that  described  as  "a  certain 
absolute  system  of  ideas." 

The  second  definition  of  internal  meaning  is  the  one  in 
which  it  is  stated  as  the  "partial  expression,"  "embodiment," 
and  "fulfilment"  of  a  single  conscious  purpose,  and  in  which 
subsequently  and  consequently  the  idea  is  identified  with 
"any  conscious  act,"  for  example,  singing.  The  first  part  of 
the  statement  appears  to  say  that  the  idea  of  a  melody  is  in 

1  Pp.  22,  23 ;  italics  mine.  2  P.  307.  3  p.  337. 


350  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

" partial  fulfilment"  of  the  idea  regarded  as  the  purpose  to 
sing  the  melody.  But,  as  the  first  statement  of  internal 
meaning  implies,  how  can  one  have  a  purpose  to  sing  the 
melody  except  in  and  through  the  idea  ?  It  is  precisely  the 
construction  of  an  idea  that  transforms  the  vague  "indefinite 
restlessness"  and  dissatisfaction  into  a  purpose.  The  idea  is 
the  defining,  the  sharpening  of  the  blind  activity  of  mere 
sensation,  mere  want,  into  a  plan  of  action. 

However,  Mr.  Royce  meets  this  difficulty  at  once  by  the 
statement  that  the  term  "idea"  here  not  only  covers  the 
activity  involved  in  forming  the  idea,  e.  g.,  the  idea  of  sing- 
ing, but  includes  the  action  of  singing,  which  fulfils  this 
purpose.  "In  the  same  sense  any  conscious  act  at  the 
moment  when  you  perform  it  not  merely  expresses,  but  is, 
in  my  present  sense,  an  idea."1 

But  this  sort  of  an  adjustment  between  the  idea  as  the 
purpose  and  as  the  fulfilment  of  the  purpose  raises  a  new 
question.  What  here  becomes  of  the  distinction  between 
immediate  and  mediating  experience?  Surely  there  is  a 
pretty  discernible  difference  between  experience  as  a  pur- 
posive idea  and  the  experience  which  fulfils  this  purpose. 
To  call  them  both  "ideas"  is  at  least  confusing,  and  indeed 
it  appears  that  it  is  just  this  confusion  that  obscures  the 
fundamental  difficulty  in  dealing,  later  on,  with  the  problem 
of  truth  and  error.  To  be  sure,  the  very  formation  of  the 
idea  as  the  purpose,  the  "plan  of  action,"  is  the  beginning 
of  the  relief  from  the  "indefinite  restlessness."  On  the 
other  hand,  it  defines  and  sharpens  the  dissatisfaction. 
When  this  vague  unrest  takes  the  form  of  a  purpose  to 
attain  food  or  shelter,  or  to  sing  in  tune,  it  is  of  course  the 
first  step  toward  solution.  But  this  very  definition  of  the 
dissatisfaction  intensifies  it.  The  idea  as  purpose,  then, 
instead  of  being  the  fulfilment,  appears  to  be  the  plan,  the 

IP.  23;  italics  mine. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         351 

method    of    fulfilment.      The    fulfilling  experience    is    the 
further  experience  to  which  the  idea  points  and  leads. 

To  follow  a  little  farther  this  relation  between  the  pur- 
posive and  fulfilling  aspects  of  experience,  it  is  of  course 
apparent  that  the  idea  as  the  purpose,  the  "plan  of  action," 
must  as  a  function  go  over  into  the  fulfilling  experience. 
My  purpose  to  sing  the  melody  must  remain,  in  so  far  as  the 
action  is  a  conscious  one,  until  the  melody  is  sung.  I  say 
"as  a  function,"  for  the  specific  content  of  this  purpose  is 
continuously  changing.  The  purpose  is  certainly  not  the 
same  in  content  after  half  the  melody  has  been  sung  as  it  is 
at  the  beginning.  This  means  that  the  purpose  is  being 
progressively  fulfilled;  and  as  part  of  the  purpose  is  ful- 
filled each  moment,  so  a  part  of  the  original  content  of  the 
idea  drops  out ;  and  when  the  fulfilling  process  of  this  par- 
ticular purpose  is  complete,  or  is  suspended — for,  in  Mr. 
Royce's  view,  it  never  is  complete  in  human  experience  — 
that  purpose  then  gives  way  to  some  other,  perhaps  one 
growing  out  of  it,  but  still  one  regarded  as  another.  A 
purpose  realized,  fulfilled,  cannot  persist  as  a  purpose.  We 
may  desire  to  repeat  the  experience  in  memory;  i.  e., 
instead  of  singing  aloud,  simply,  as  Mr.  Royce  says,  "silently 
recall  and  listen  to  its  imagined  presence."  But  here  we 
must  remember  that  the  memory  experience,  as  such,  is  not 
an  idea  in  the  logical  sense  at  all.  It  is  an  immediate  experi- 
ence that  is  fulfilling  the  idea  of  the  song  which  constitutes 
the  purpose  to  recall  it,  just  as  truly  as  the  singing  aloud 
fulfils  the  idea  of  singing  aloud.  Shouting,  whistling,  or 
"listening  in  memory  to  the  silent  notes"  may  all  be  equally 
immediate,  fulfilling  experiences.  Doubtless  the  idea  as 
purpose  involves  memory,  as  Mr.  Royce  says.1  But  it  is  a 
memory  used  as  a  purpose,  and  it  is  just  this  use  of  the 
memory  material  as  a  purpose  that  makes  it  a  logical  idea. 

1C/.  p.  34;  also  p.  22. 


352  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

In  its  content  the  purposive  idea  is  just  as  immediate  and  as 
mechanical  as  any  other  part  of  experience.  "  Psychology 
explains  the  presence  and  the  partial  present  efficacy  of 
this  purpose  by  the  laws  of  motor  processes,  of  habit,  or  of 
what  is  often  called  association."  *  Here  "  idea,"  however, 
'simply  means,  as  Mr.  Royce  takes  it  in  his  second  state- 
ment, conscious  content  of  any  sort.  But  this  is  not  the 
meaning  of  "idea"  in  the  logical  sense.  The  logical 
idea  is  a  conscious  content  used  as  an  organizer,  as  "a 
plan  of  action,"  to  get  other  contents.  If,  for  example, 
in  the  course  of  writing  a  paper  one  wishes  to  recall  an 
abstract  distinction,  as  the  distinction  dawns  in  conscious- 
ness, it  is  not  an  idea  in  the  logical  sense.  It  is  just 
as  truly  an  immediate  fulfilling  experience  as  is  a  good 
golf  stroke.  So  in  the  mathematician's  most  abstruse  pro- 
cesses, which  Mr.  Royce  so  admirably  portrays,  the 
results  for  which  he  watches  "as  empirically  as  the  astrono- 
mer alone  with  his  star"  are  not  ideas  in  the  logical  sense; 
they  are  immediate,  fulfilling  experiences.2  The  distinction 
between  the  idea  as  the  mediating  experience  —  that  is,  the 
logical  idea  —  and  the  immediate  fulfilling  experience  is 
therefore  not  one  of  content,  but  of  use. 

There  is  a  sense,  however,  in  which  the  idea  as  a  purpose 
can  be  taken  as  the  partial  fulfilment  of  another  purpose ;  in 
the  sense  that  any  purpose  is  the  outgrowth  of  activity  involv- 
ing previous  purposes.  This  becomes  evident  when  we 
inquire  into  the  "indefinite  restlessness"  and  dissatisfaction 
out  of  which  the  idea  as  purpose  springs.  Dissatisfaction 
presupposes  some  activity  already  going  on  in  attempted  ful- 

ip.  35. 

2  This  warns  us  that  in  the  phrase,  "  a  plan  of  action,"  the  term  "  action  "  mnst 
be  more  inclusive  than  it  is  in  much  current  discussion.  It  must  not  be  limited  to 
gymnastic  performance.  It  must  apply  to  any  sort  of  activity  planned  for,  and 
which,  when  it  arrives,  fulfils  the  plan.  This,  I  take  it,  is  the  import  of  the  para- 
graph at  the  top  of  p.  7  of  PKOFESSOB  JAMES'S  Philosophical  Conceptions  and  Practi- 
cal Results. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  or  PURPOSE         353 

filment  of  some  previous  purpose.  If  one  is  dissatisfied  with 
his  singing,  or  with  not  singing,  it  is  because  one  has  already 
purposed  to  participate  in  the  performance  of  a  company  of 
people  which  now  he  finds  singing  a  certain  melody,  or  one 
has  rashly  contracted  to  entertain  a  strenuous  infant  who 
is  vociferously  demanding  his  favorite  ditty.  This  is 
only  saying  that  any  given  dissatisfaction  and  the  purpose 
to  which  it  gives  rise  grow  out  of  activity  involving  previous 
purposing.  But  this  does  not  do  away  with  the  distinction 
between  the  idea  as  a  purpose  and  the  immediate  fulfilling 
experience. 

If  the  discussion  appears  at  this  point  to  be  growing 
somewhat  captious,  let  us  pass  to  a  consideration  of  the 
relation  between  internal  and  external  meanings,  where 
the  problem  of  truth  and  error  appears,  and  where  the  vital 
import  of  these  distinctions  becomes  more  obvious. 

II.   PURPOSE  AND  THE  JUDGMENT 

Mr.  Royce  begins  with  the  traditional  definition  of  truth, 
which  he  then  proceeds  to  reinterpret: 

Truth  is  very  frequently  defined  in  terms  of  external  meaning 

as  that  about  which  we  judge In  the  second  place,  truth  has 

been  defined  as  the  correspondence  between  our  ideas  and  their 
objects.1  ....  When  we  undertake  to  express  the  objective 
validity  of  any  truth,  we  use  judgment.  These  judgments,  if  sub- 
jectively regarded,  that  is,  if  viewed  merely  as  processes  of  our  own 
present  thinking,  whose  objects  are  external  to  themselves,  involve 
in  all  their  more  complex  forms,  combinations  of  ideas,  devices 
whereby  we  weave  already  present  ideas  into  more  manifold 
structure,  thereby  enriching  our  internal  meaning;  but  the  act  of 
judgment  has  always  its  other,  its  objective  aspect.  The  ideas 

when  we  judge  are  also  to  possess  external  meaning It  is 

true,  as  Mr.  Bradley  has  well  said,  that  the  intended  subject  of 
every  judgment  is  reality  itself.  The  ideas  that  we  combine  when 
we  judge  about  external  meanings  are  to  have  value  for  us  as  truth 

1  P.  270. 


354  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

only  in  so  far  as  they  not  only  possess  internal  meaning,  but  also 
imitate,  by  their  structure,  what  is  at  once  other  than  themselves, 
and,  in  significance,  something  above  themselves.  That,  at  least, 
is  the  natural  view  of  our  consciousness,  just  in  so  far  as,  in 
judging,  we  conceive  our  thought  as  essentially  other  than  its 
external  object,  and  as  destined  merely  to  correspond  thereto. 
Now  we  have  by  this  time  come  to  feel  how  hard  it  is  to  define  the 
Reality  to  which  our  ideas  are  thus  to  conform,  and  about  which 
our  judgments  are  said  to  be  made,  so  long  as  we  thus  sunder 
external  and  internal  meanings.1 

The  universal  judgment. —  The  problem  is,  then,  to 
discover  just  the  nature  and  ground  of  this  relation  between 
the  internal  and  external  meaning,  between  the  idea  and  its 
object.  This  relation  is  established  in  the  act  of  judgment. 
Taking  first  the  universal  judgment,  we  find  here  that  the 
internal  meaning  has  at  best  only  a  negative  relation  to  the 
external  meaning. 

To  say  that  all  A  is  B  is  in  fact  merely  to  assert  that  the  real 
world  contains  no  objects  that  are  A,  but  that  fail  to  be  of  the  class 
B.  To  say  that  no  A  is  B  is  to  assert  that  the  real  world  contains 
no  objects  that  are  at  once  A  and  B.2 

The  universal  judgments  then  "tell  us  indirectly  what  is 
in  the  realm  of  external  meaning ;  but  only  by  first  telling 
us  what  is  not."8 

However,  these  universal  judgments  have  after  all  a 
positive  value  in  the  realm  of  internal  meaning;  that  is,  as 
mere  thought. 

This  negative  character  of  the  universal  judgments  holds  true 
of  them,  as  we  have  just  said,  just  in  so  far  as  you  sunder  the 
external  and  internal  meaning,  and  just  in  so  far  as  you  view  the 
real  as  the  beyond,  and  as  the  merely  beyond.  If  you  turn  your 
attention  once  more  to  the  realm  of  ideas,  viewed  as  internal  mean- 
ing, you  see,  indeed,  that  they  are  constantly  becoming  enriched  in 
their  inner  life  by  all  this  process.  To  know  by  inner  demonstra- 
tion that  2+2  =  4  and  that  this  is  necessarily  so,  is  not  yet  to 

1  Pp.  270,  271.  2  p.  276.  3  p.  277. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         355 

know  that  the  external  world,  taken  merely  as  the  Beyond, contains 
any  true  or  finally  valid  variety  of  objects  at  all,  any  two  or  four 

objects  that  can  be  counted On  the  other  hand,  so  far  as 

your  internal  meaning  goes,  to  have  experienced  within  that  which 
makes  you  call  this  judgment  necessary,  is  indeed  to  have  observed 
a  character  about  your  own  ideas  which  rightly  seems  to  you  very 
positive.1 

This  passage  deserves  especial  attention.  In  the  light  of 
Kant,  and  in  view  of  Mr.  Royce's  general  definition  of  the 
judgment  as  the  reference  of  internal  to  external  meanings, 
one  is  puzzled  to  find  that  for  the  mathematician  the  positive 
value  of  the  judgment  "two  and  two  are  four"  is  confined 
to  the  realm  of  internal  meaning.  To  be  sure,  Mr.  Royce 
says  that  this  limitation  of  the  positive  value  of  the  uni- 
versal judgment  to  the  world  of  internal  meaning  occurs 
only  when  the  external  and  internal  meaning  are  sundered. 
But  the  point  is :  Does  the  mathematician  or  anyone  else 
ever  so  sunder  as  to  regard  the  judgment  "  two  and  two  are 
four"  as  of  positive  value  only  as  internal  meaning? 
Indeed,  in  another  connection  Mr.  Royce  himself  shows 
most  clearly  that  mathematical  results  are  as  objective  and 
as  empirical  as  the  astronomer's  star.2  Nor  would  it  appear 
competent  for  anyone  to  say  here:  "Of  course,  they  are  not 
internal  meanings  after  we  come  to  see,  through  the  kind 
offices  of  the  epistemologist,  that  the  internal  meanings  are 
valid  of  the  external  world."  We  are  insisting  that  they 
are  never  taken  by  the  mathematician  and  scientists  at 
first  as  merely  internal  meaning  whose  external  meaning 
is  then  to  be  established.  Surely  the  mathematical  judg- 
ment, or  any  other,  does  not  require  an  epistemological 
midwife  to  effect  the  passage  from  internal  to  external 
meaning.  The  external  meaning  is  there  all  the  while 
in  the  form  of  the  diagrams  and  motor  tensions  and 
images  with  which  the  mathematician  works.  The  difficulty 

l  Pp.  280,  281.  2  See  p.  256. 


356  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

here  again  seems  to  be  that  the  distinction  above  discussed 
between  the  idea  in  the  logical  sense,  as  purpose,  and  the 
immediate  fulfilling  experience  is  lost  sight  of.  The  rela- 
tion between  two  and  four  is  not  first  discovered  as  a  merely 
internal  meaning.  It  is  discovered  in  the  process  of  ful- 
filling some  purpose  involving  the  working  out  of  this 
relation.  So  the  sum  of  the  angles  of  a  triangle  is  not 
discovered  as  a  mere  internal  meaning  whose  external 
meaning  is  then  to  be  found.  It  is  found  in  working  with 
the  triangle.  It  is  discovered  in  the  triangle.  And,  once 
more,  it  matters  not  if  the  triangle  here  is  a  mere  memory 
image.  In  relation  to  the  purpose,  to  the  logical  idea,  it  is 
as  truly  external  and  objective  as  pine  sticks  or  chalk  marks. 
The  streams  of  motor,  etc.,  images  that  flow  spontaneously 
under  the  stimulus  of  the  purpose  are  just  as  immediate 
fulfilling  experiences  as  the  manipulation  of  sticks  or  chalk 
lines. 

The  difficulty  in  keeping  the  universal  judgment,  as  a 
judgment,  in  terms  of  merely  internal  meaning  may  be  seen 
from  the  following: 

As  to  these  two  types  of  judgments,  the  universal  and  the  par- 
ticular, they  both,  as  we  have  seen,  make  use  of  experience.  The 
universal*  judgments  arise  in  the  realm  where  experience  and  idea 
have  already  fused  into  one  whole;  and  this  is  precisely  the  realm 
of  internal  meanings.  Here  one  constructs  and  observes  the  con- 
sequences of  one's  construction.  But  the  construction  is  at  once 

an  experience  of  fact  and  an  idea Upon  the  basis  of  such 

ideal  constructions  one  makes  universal  judgments.  These  in  a 
fashion  still  to  us,  at  this  stage,  mysterious,  undertake  to  be  valid 
of  that  other  world — the  world  of  external  meaning.1 

One  is  somewhat  puzzled  to  know  just  what  is  meant  by 
the  fusion  "of  experience  and  idea."  We  must  infer  that  it 
means  the  fusion  of  some  aspect  of  experience  which  can  be 
set  over  against  idea,  and  this  has  always  meant  the  external 

i  P.  289 ;  italics  mine. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  or  PURPOSE         357 

meaning,  and  this  interpretation  seems  further  warranted 
by  the  statement  immediately  following  which  describes  the 
fusion  as  one  "of  fact  and  idea."  The  situation  then  seems 
to  be  this:  An  internal  and  an  external  meaning,  a  fact  and 
an  idea,  "fuse  into  one  whole"  and  thus  constitute  that 
which  is  yet  "precisely  the  realm  of  internal  meanings," 
which  aims  to  be  valid  of  still  another  world  of  external 
meanings.  And  this  waives  the  question  of  how  experience 
fused  into  one  whole  can  be  an  internal  meaning,  since  as 
such  it  must  be  in  opposition  and  reference  to  an  external 
meaning ;  or  conversely,  how  experience  can  be  at  once  fact 
and  idea  and  still  be  "fused  into  one  whole." 

Nor  does  the  difficulty  disappear  when  we  turn  to 
the  aspects  of  universality  and  necessity.  What  is  the 
significance  and  basis  of  universality  and  necessity  as  con- 
fined merely  to  the  realm  of  internal  meaning  ? 

So  far  as  your  internal  meaning  goes,  to  have  experienced 
within  that  which  makes  you  call  this  judgment  necessary  is, 
indeed,  to  have  observed  a  character  about  your  own  ideas  which 
rightly  seems  to  you  very  positive.1 

But  what  is  it  that  we  "experience  within"  which  makes 
us  call  this  judgment  necessary  ?  In  the  discussion  of  the 
relation  of  the  universal  judgment  to  the  disjunctive  judg- 
ment, through  which  the  former  is  shown  to  get  even  its 
negative  force,  there  is  an  interesting  statement: 

One  who  inquires  into  a  matter  upon  which  he  believes  himself 
able  to  decide  in  universal  terms,  e.gr.,  in  mathematics,  has  present 
to  his  mind,  at  the  outset,  questions  such  as  admit  of  alternative 
answers.  "A,"  he  declares,  "in  case  it  exists  at  all,  is  either  B  or 
C."  Further  research  shows  universally,  perhaps,  that  No  A  is  B. 

The  last  sentence  is  the  statement  referred  to.  What  is 
meant  by  "further  research  shows  universally,  perhaps,  that 
No  A  is  B"  ?  What  kind  of  "research,"  internal  or  external, 

1  P.  281 ;  italics  mine. 


358  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

can  show  this  ?  In  short,  there  appears  to  be  as  much 
difficulty  with  universality  and  necessity  in  the  realm  of 
internal  meaning  as  in  the  reference  of  internal  to  external 
meaning. 1 

Instead,  however,  of  discussing  this  point,  Mr.  Royce 
pursues  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  the  external  and 
internal  meaning,  and  finds  that  regarded  as  sundered  there 
is  no  basis  so  far  for  even  the  negative  universality  and 
necessity  in  the  reference  of  the  internal  meaning  to  the 
external. 

For  at  this  point  arises  the  ancient  question,  How  can  you  know 
at  all  that  your  judgment  is  universally  valid,  even  in  this  ideal 
and  negative  way,  about  that  external  realm  of  validity,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  external,  and  is  merely  your  Other, — the  Beyond  ?  Must 
you  not  just  dogmatically  say  that  that  world  must  agree  with  your 
negations  ?  This  judgment  is  indeed  positive.  But  how  do  you 
prove  it  ?  The  only  answer  has  to  be  in  terms  which  already  sug- 
gest how  vain  is  the  very  sundering  in  question.  If  you  can  pre- 
determine, even  if  but  thus  negatively,  what  cannot  exist  in  the 
object,  the  object  then  cannot  be  merely  foreign  to  you.  It  must 
be  somewhat  predetermined  by  your  Meaning.2 

But  in  the  universal  judgment  this  determination,  as  referred 
to  the  external  meaning,  is  only  negative. 

The  particular  judgment. — It  is  then  through  the  par- 
ticular judgment  that  the  universal  judgment  is  to  get  any 
positive  value  in  its  reference  to  the  external  meaning. 

As  has  been  repeatedly  pointed  out  in  the  discussions  on  recent 
Logic,  the  particular  judgments — whose  form  is  Some  A  is  B,  or 
Some  A  is  not  B — are  the  typical  judgments  that  positively  assert 
Being  in  the  object  viewed  as  external.  This  fact  constitutes  their 
essential  contrast  with  the  universal  judgments.  They  undertake 
to  cross  the  chasm  that  is  said  to  sunder  internal  and  external 
meanings ;  and  the  means  by  which  they  do  so  is  always  what  is 
called  "  external  experience." 

1  It  is  worth  noting  in  passing  that  here  the  universal  appears  to  be  located  in 
finite  experience,  while  the  ground  of  the  particular  is  in  the  absolute. 

2  p.  282. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PUKPOSE         359 

It  is  now  high  time  to  ask  why  the  internal  meaning 
seeks  this  external  meaning.  Why  does  it  seek  an  object? 
Why  does  it  want  to  cross  the  chasm?  In  other  words, 
what  is  the  significance  of  the  demand  for  the  particular 
judgment?  In  the  introduction  we  have  been  told,  as  a 
matter  of  description,  that  the  internal  meanings  do  seek 
the  external  meaning,  but  why  do  they?  We  have  also 
been  told  that  universal  judgments  "develop  and  enrich 
the  realm  of  internal  meaning."  Why,  then,  should  there 
be  a  demand  for  the  external  meaning,  for  a  further  object? 
The  answer  is: 

We  have  our  internal  meanings.  We  develop  them  in  inner 
experience.  There  they  get  presented  as  something  of  universal 
value,  but  always  in  fragments.  They,  therefore,  so  far  dissatisfy. 
We  conceive  of  the  Other  wherein  these  meanings  shall  get  some 
sort  of  final  fulfilment.1 

It  is,  then,  the  incomplete  and  fragmentary  character  of 
the  internal  meaning  that  demands  the  particular  judgment. 
The  particular  judgment  is  to  further  complete  and  deter- 
mine the  incomplete  and  indeterminate  internal  meaning. 
And  yet  no  sooner  is  this  particular  judgment  made  than 
we  are  told  that  "it  is  a  form  at  once  positive,  and  very 
unsatisfactorily  indeterminate."  Again:2 

The  judgments  of  experience,  the  particular  judgments,  express 
a  positive  but  still  imperfect  determination  of  internal  meaning 
through  external  experience.  The  limit  or  goal  of  this  process 
would  be  an  individual  judgment  wherein  the  will  expressed  its 
own  final  determination.3 

Apparently,  then,  the  particular  judgment  to  which  the 
internal  meaning  appeals  for  completion  and  determination 
only  succeeds  in  increasing  the  fragmentary  and  indetermi- 
nate character. 

This  brings  us  to  another  " previous  question."     Just 

1  P.  284 ;  italics  mine.  a  P.  283.  3  p.  332. 


360  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

what  are  we  to  understand  by  this  " fragmentary"  and 
"indeterminate"  character  of  the  internal  meaning?  In 
what  sense,  with  reference  to  what,  is  it  incomplete  and 
fragmentary  ?  Later  we  shall  be  told  that  it  is  with  refer- 
ence to  "its  own  final  and  completely  individual  expression." 
This  is  to  be  reached  in  the  individual  judgment.  And  if 
we  ask  what  is  meant  by  this  final,  complete,  and  individual 
expression  —  which,  by  the  way,  no  human  being  can 
experience — we  read,  wondering  all  the  while  how  it  can  be 
known,  that  it  is  simply  "  the  expression  that  seeks  no  other," 
that  "is  satisfied,"  that  "is  conclusive  of  the  search  for  per- 
fection."1 Waiving  for  the  present  questions  concerning 
the  basis  of  this  satisfaction  and  perfection,  all  this  leaves 
unanswered  our  query  concerning  the  other  end  of  the 
matter,  viz.,  the  meaning  and  criterion  of  the  fragmentary 
and  indeterminate  character  of  these  internal  meanings. 

If  we  here  return  to  the  first  definition  of  internal  mean- 
ing of  the  idea  as  a  purpose  in  the  sense  of  "a  plan  of 
action,"  such  as  "  singing  in  tune,"  or  getting  the  properties 
of  a  geometrical  figure,  it  does  not  seem  difficult  to  find  a 
basis  and  meaning  for  this  fragmentary  and  indeterminate 
character.  First  we  may  note  in  a  general  way  that  it  is  of 
the  very  essence  of  a  plan  or  purpose  to  lead  on  to  a  fulfill- 
ing experience  such  as  singing  in  tune,  or  reaching  a  mathe- 
matical equation.  But  here  this  fulfilling  experience  to 
which  the  plan  points  is  not  a  mere  working  out  of  detail 
inside  the  plan  itself,  although,  indeed,  this  does  take  place. 
If  this  were  all  the  fulfilling  experience  meant,  it  is  difficult 
to  see  how  we  should  escape  subjective  idealism.2  We  start 
with  a  relatively  indeterminate  idea  and  end  with  a  more 
determinate  idea,  though,  indeed,  there  is  yet  no  criterion 
for  this  increased  determination.  To  be  sure,  the  idea  as  a 

1P.339. 

2  This  ghost  of  subjectivism  haunts  the  entire  part  of  the  essay  in  which  the 
final  fulfilment  of  finite  ideas  is  found  in  "  a  certain  absolute  system  of  ideas." 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         361 

plan  of  action,  as  has  already  been  stated,  does  undergo 
change  and  does  become,  if  you  please,  more  definite  and 
complete  as  a  plan;  but  this  does  not  constitute  its  fulfil- 
ment. Its  fulfilment  surely  is  to  be  found  in  the  immediate 
experiences  of  singing,  etc.,  to  which  the  idea  points  and 
leads. 

The  fragmentary  and  incomplete  character  of  the  internal 
meaning  as  a  plan  of  action  does  not,  then,  after  all,  so  much 
describe  the  plan  itself  as  it  does  the  general  condition  of  ex- 
perience out  of  which  the  idea  arises.  Experience  takes  on  the 
form  of  a  plan,  of  an  idea,  precisely  because  it  has  fallen  apart, 
has  become  "fragmentary."  It  is  just  the  business  of  the 
internal  meaning,  as  Mr.  Royce  so  well  shows,  to  form  a 
plan,  an  ideal,  an  hypothetical  synthesis  that  shall  stimulate 
an  activity,  which  shall  satisfactorily  heal  the  breach. 
"Fragmentary"  is  a  quality,  then,  that  belongs,  not  to  the 
idea  in  itself  considered,  but  to  the  general  condition  of 
experience,  of  which  the  idea  as  a  plan  is  an  expression. 

If,  now,  the  fragmentary  character  of  the  internal  mean- 
ing is  determined  simply  with  relation  to  the  fulfilling 
experiences,  such  as  singing  in  tune,  adjustments  of  geo- 
metrical figures,  etc.,  to  which  it  points  and  leads,  it  seems 
as  if  the  completion  of  the  internal  meaning  must  be  defined 
in  the  same  terms.  And  this  would  appear  to  open  a  pretty 
straight  path  to  the  redefinition  of  truth  and  error. 

III.   THE  CRITERION  OF  TRUTH  AND  ERROR 

At  the  outset,  truth  was  defined  as  the  "correspondence" 
or  *' agreement"  of  an  idea  with  its  object.  But  we  have 
seen  that  correspondence  or  agreement  with  an  object 
means  the  completion  and  determination  of  the  idea  itself, 
and  since  the  idea  is  here  a  specific  "plan  of  action,"  it 
would  seem  that  the  "true"  idea  would  be  the  one  that  can 
complete  itself  by  stimulating  a  satisfying  activity.  The 


362  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

false  idea  would  be  one  that  cannot  complete  itself  in  a  sat- 
isfying activity,  such  as  singing  in  tune,  constructing  a 
mathematical  equation,  etc.,  and  just  this  solution  is  very 
clearly  expounded  by  our  author.  In  the  case  of  mathe- 
matical inquiry, 

In  just  so  far  as  we  pause  satisfied  we  observe  that  there  "is 
no  other"  mathematical  fact  to  be  sought  in  the  direction  of  the 
particular  inquiry  in  hand.  Satisfaction  of  purpose  by  means  of 
presented  fact  and  such  determinate  satisfaction  as  sends  us  to  no 
other  experience  for  further  light  and  fulfillment,  precisely  this 
outcome  is  itself  the  Other  that  is  sought  when  we  begin  our 
inquiry.1 

So  "when  other  facts  of  experience  are  sought,"  if  I  watch 
for  stars  or  for  a  chemical  precipitate,  or  for  a  turn  in  the 
stock  market,  or  in  the  sickness  of  a  friend,  my  ideas  are 
true  when  they  are  satisfied  with  "the  presented  facts."  Again, 

It  follows  that  the  finally  determinate  form  of  the  object  of  any 
finite  idea  is  that  form  which  the  idea  itself  would  assume  when- 
ever it  became  individuated,  or  in  other  words,  became  a  completely 
determined  idea,  an  idea  or  will  fulfilled  by  a  wholly  adequate 
empirical  content,  for  which  no  other  content  need  be  substituted 
or  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  satisfied  idea,  could  be  substituted.2 

In  such  passages  as  these  it  seems  clear  that  the  test  of 
the  trutK  of  an  idea  is  its  power  to  bring  us  to  the  point 
where  we  "pause  satisfied,"  where  "no  other  content  need 
be  substituted,"  etc.  Nor  in  such  passages  does  there  seem 
to  be  any  doubt  of  reaching  satisfaction  in  particular  cases. 
Here,  it  appears,  we  may  sing  in  tune,  we  may  get  the 
desired  precipitate,  and  possibly  even  interpret  the  stock 
market  correctly.  Of  course,  the  discord,  the  hunger,  the 
loss,  will  come  again;  but  so  will  new  ideas,  new  truths. 
"Man  thinks  in  order  to  get  control  of  his  world  and  thereby 
of  himself."3  Then  the  control  actually  gained  must  meas- 
ure the  value,  the  truth  of  his  thought.  Do  you  wish  to 

1  P.  330 ;  italics  mine.  2  p.  337.  3  p.  286. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OP  PURPOSE         363 

sing  in  tune,  "then  your  musical  ideas  are  false  if  they  lead 
you  to  strike  what  are  then  called  false  notes." 1 

It  should  also  be  noticed  that  here  this  desired  deter- 
mination does  not  consist  in  a  further  determination  of  the 
mere  idea  as  such.  It  is  found  in  "the  presented  fact,"  in 
the  immediate  activity  of  singing,  of  getting  precipitates, 
etc.  As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  it  is  only  by  using 
the  term  "idea"  for  both  the  purpose  and  the  fulfilling  act 
of  singing  that  this  "pause  of  satisfaction"  can  be  ascribed 
to  the  further  determination  of  the  idea.  As  such,  as  also 
before  remarked,  the  sort  of  determination  that  the  idea 
here  gets  means  its  termination,  its  disappearance  in  the 
immediate  experiences  of  singing,  etc.,  to  which  it  leads. 
The  "indefinite  restlessness"  of  hunger  and  cold  would 
scarcely  be  satisfied  by  getting  more  determinate  and 
specific  ideas  only  of  food  and  shelter.  The  satisfaction 
comes  when  the  ideas  are  "realized,"  when  the  "plans"  are 
swallowed  up  in  fulfilment. 

But  in  all  this  nothing  has  been  said  about  "the  certain 
absolute  system  of  ideas,"  nor  does  there  appear  to  be  here 
any  demand  for  it.  To  be  sure,  in  the  passages  just  con- 
sidered, experience  has  been  found  to  become  "fragmentary," 
but  it  has  also  been  found  capable  of  healing,  of  wholing 
itself,  not  of  course  into  any  "final  whole,"  but  into  the  unity 
of  "satisfaction"  as  regards  "the  particular  inquiry  in 
hand."  There  is  of  course  failure  as  well,  but  this  also  is 
not  final.  It  means  simply  that  we  must  look  farther  for 
the  "pause  of  satisfaction,"  that  we  must  construct  another 
idea,  another  "plan  of  action." 

But,  after  having  shown  that  the  idea  as  a  plan  of  action 
may  lead  to  satisfaction  in  the  particular  case,  and  that  its 
success  or  failure  so  to  do  is  one  measure  of  its  truth  or 
falsity,  we  are  now  suddenly  aroused  to  the  fact  that  after 

i  P.  307. 


364  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

all  thought  does  not  lead  us  to  the  completed  "absolute 
system  of  ideas,"  to  a  final  stage  of  eternal  unbroken  satis- 
faction. 

But  never  in  our  human  process  of  experience  do  we  reach  that 
determination.  It  is  for  us  the  object  of  love  and  of  hope,  of  desire 
and  of  will,  of  faith  and  of  work,  but  never  of  present  finding.1 

If  at  this  point  one  asks:  Whence  this  absolute  system 
of  ideas?  Why  have  we  to  reckon  with  it  at  all?  there 
appears  to  be  little  that  is  satisfying.  Indeed,  it  seems 
difficult  to  get  rid  of  the  impression  that  this  "certain 
absolute  system  of  ideas"  is  on  our  hands  as  a  philosophical 
heirloom  from  the  time  of  Plato,  so  hallowed  by  time  and 
so  established  by  centuries  of  acceptance  that  we  have 
ceased  to  ask  for  its  credentials.  To  ground  it  in  the 
" essentially  fragmentary  character  of  human  experience" 
appears  to  be  a  petitio,  for  experience  does  not  appear 
"essentially  fragmentary"  in  this  sense  until  after  the 
absolute  system  has  been  posited. 

And  this  brings  to  notice  that  at  this  point  both  the 
fragmentary  and  unitary  characters  of  experience  take  on 
new  meaning.  So  far  this  fragmentary  character  has  been 
defined  with  reference  to  "the  particular  inquiry  in  hand." 
Now,  since  the  distinction  between  absolute  and  human 
experience  has  emerged,  the  fragmentary  character  becomes 
an  absolute  quality  of  the  latter  in  contrast  with  the  former. 
So,  mutatis  mutandis,  of  unity.  Up  to  this  point  unity, 
wholeness,  has  been  possible  within  human  experience  in  the 
case  of  particular  problems,  such  as  singing  in  tune,  etc.  But 
with  the  appearance  of  the  absolute  system  of  ideas,  whole- 
ness is  now  the  exclusive  quality  of  the  latter,  as  incomplete- 
ness is  of  human  experience,  though  of  course  the  working 
unity,  the  unity  resulting  in  "pauses  of  satisfaction,"  must 
still  remain  in  the  latter. 

1P.297. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         365 

The  problem  now  is  to  somehow  work  the  absolute  system 
of  ideas  into  connection  with  the  conception  of  the  idea  as  a 
purpose,  as  a  concrete  plan  of  action.  Here  is  where  the 
third  conception  of  the  relation  between  idea  and  purpose, 
described  at  the  beginning,  comes  into  play — the  conception 
in  which  the  idea,  instead  of  being  the  purpose,  or  the  ful- 
filment of  a  purpose,  has  the  purpose  to  correspond  with,  or 
represent  "its  own  final  and  completely  individual  expres- 
sion," contained  in  the  absolute  system.  From  the  previous 
standpoint  the  idea's  "own  final  and  completely  individual 
expression"  has  been  found  in  the  fulfilling  experiences  of 
singing  in  tune,  getting  mathematical  equations,  chemical 
precipitates,  etc.  Here  this  complete  individual  experience 
can  never  be  found  in  finite,  human  experience,  but  must  be 
sought  in  the  absolute  system — and  this  can  be  only  "the 
object  of  love  and  hope,  of  desire  and  will,  never  of  present 
finding." 

Notwithstanding  the  many  previous  protestations  that  the 
purposive  function  of  the  idea  is  its  "primary"  and  "most 
essential"  character,  we  are  here  forced  to  fall  back  upon 
correspondence — representation  as  the  primary,  the  essential, 
and  indeed,  it  appears  at  times,  as  the  sole  function.  For  in 
the  attempt  to  bring  these  two  functions  together  the  purpos- 
ive function  is  swallowed  up  in  the  representative.  The  idea 
still  is,  or  has  a  purpose,  a  "plan  of  action,"  but  this  pur- 
pose, this  plan,  is  now  nothing  but  to  represent  and  corre- 
spond with  its  own  final  and  completed  form  in  the  absolute 
system.  By  this  simple  coup  is  the  purposive  function  of 
the  idea  reduced  at  once  to  the  representative.  Nor  is  it 
pertinent  to  urge  at  this  point  that  every  purpose  involves 
representation,  that  the  plan  must  be  some  sort  of  an  image 
or  scheme  which  symbolizes  and  stimulates  the  thing  to 
be  done.  This  no  one  would  question,  but  now  the  sole 
"thing  to  be  done"  apparently  is  to  perfect  this  representa- 


366  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

tion  of  the  complete  and  individual  form  in  the  absolute 
system.1 

Once  more,  an  array  of  passages  could  be  marshaled  from 
almost  every  page  refuting  any  such  interpretation  as  this, 
but  they  would  be  passages  expounding  the  part  played  by 
the  idea  in  such  concrete  experiences  as  singing,  measuring, 
etc.,  not  in  representing  an  absolute  system  of  ideas.  Even 
as  regards  the  latter  one  might  urge  that,  by  insisting  on 
the  active  character  of  the  idea,  we  could  after  all  regard 
this  absolute  system  as  a  life  of  will  after  the  fashion  of  our 
own,  were  it  not  at  once  described  as  "the  complete  embodi- 
ment," "the  final  fulfilment,"  of  finite  ideas.  A  life  con- 
sisting of  mere  fulfilment  seems  a  baffling  paradox.  And 
its  timeless  character  only  adds  to  the  difficulty.  More- 
over, if  we  regard  the  system  as  constituted  by  such  con- 
crete activities  as  measuring  and  singing,  etc.,  while  we 
have  saved  will,  we  shall  now  have  to  fall  back  upon  our  first 
conception  of  truth  as  found  in  the  idea  which  unifies  the 
fragmentary  condition  of  experience  as  related  to  specific 
problems,  not  fragmentary  as  related  to  an  absolute  system. 

This  brings  us  to  the  final  and  crucial  point  of  the  dis- 
cussion, the  part  which  purpose  plays  in  the  determination 
of  truth  and  error  from  the  standpoint  of  "the  absolute 
system  of  ideas."  When  is  this  purpose  of  the  idea  to  cor- 
respond with  its  absolute,  final,  and  completed  form  fulfilled, 

1  This  reduction  of  the  purposive  to  the  representative  function  carries  with  it 
an  interesting  implication  concerning  the  whole  character  and  relationship  of 
thought  and  will.  From  beginning  to  end,  on  almost  every  page,  Mr.  Royce  insists 
upon  the  idea  as  an  expression  of  will.  At  the  outset  we  read:  "When  we  try  to 
define  the  idea  in  itself,  as  a  conscious  fact,  our  best  means  is  to  lay  stress  upon  the 
sort  of  will  or  active  meaning  which  any  idea  involves  for  the  mind  that  forms  the 
idea"  (p.  22).  Again:  "The  idea  is  a  will  seeking  its  own  determination.  It  is 
nothing  else  "  (p.  332)— and  so  on  throughout  the  lectures.  And  we  have  already  seen 
how  consistently  this  is  worked  out  in  the  analysis  of  concrete  acts,  such  as  singing, 
etc.  But  now,  as  related  to  the  absolute  system,  the  will,  as  embodied  in  the  idea,  is 
to  find  its  final  determination  in  approximating  the  certain  absolute  system  of  ideas. 
This  would  seem  to  make  will  but  little  more  than  the  mere  form  of  representation 
itself.  The  idea  is  a  will,  but  in  its  relation  to  truth  its  will  is  "  to  correspond  even 
in  its  vagueness  to  its  own  final  and  completely  individual  expression." 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  or  PURPOSE         367 

or  partially  fulfilled?  And  here  at  the  very  outset  is  a 
difficulty.  We  have  read  repeatedly  that  the  idea  is  itself 
"the  partial  fulfilment  of  a  purpose."  It  is  now  to  seek  an 
object  which  shall  increase  this  degree  of  fulfilment,  but 
still  this  fulfilment  shall  be  incomplete.  And  when  we 
come  to  consider  error,  it  too  will  be  found  to  consist  in  a 
partial  fulfilment.  So  it  appears  that  there  are  three  stages 
of  "partial  fulfilment"  to  be  discriminated,  one  belonging 
to  the  idea  itself,  another  to  finite  truth,  and  still  another 
to  error. 

Returning  to  the  problem,  from  this  point  on  we  find  the 
two  standpoints,  that  of  the  specific  situation  and  that  of  the 
absolute  system,  so  closely  interwoven  and  entangled  that 
they  are  followed  with  great  difficulty.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  idea  seeks  correspondence  with  its  object, 
because  it  is  "fragmentary,"  "incomplete,"  "indetermined." 
And  there  we  found  that  this  indeterminate  and  frag- 
mentary character  belonged  to  the  idea  as  a  purpose,  a 
plan  of  seeking  relief  from  some  sort  of  "restlessness" 
and  "dissatisfaction,"  such  as  singing  out  of  tune,  etc. 
Here  it  is  the  incompleteness  of  an  imperfect  representation 
of  its  object  in  the  absolute  system  that  is  the  motif,  and 
how  it  is  to  effect  an  improvement  in  its  imperfect  condition 
is  now  the  problem.  Here  again  the  appeal  is  to  purpose. 
Whatever  may  constitute  the  absolute  system,  one  thing  is 
assured :  nothing  in  it  can  be  an  object  except  as  the  finite 
idea  "intends  it,"  purposes  it,  to  be  its  object.  Again  must 
we  ask:  On  what  basis  is  this  object  in  the  absolute  system 
selected  at  all  ?  In  general  the  answer  is :  On  the  basis  of  a 
need  of  "further  determination;"  but  when  we  further  ana- 
lyze this,  we  find  it  means  on  the  basis  of  a  specific  want  or 
need,  such  as  food,  shelter,  measuring,  singing,  etc.  The 
basis  of  the  selection,  then,  is  entirely  on  the  side  of  the  con- 
crete, finite  situation. 


368  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

Here,  too,  we  might  ask:  Whence  the  confidence  that 
there  will  be  found  something  in  the  absolute  system 
that  will  fulfil  the  purpose  generated  on  the  side  of  the 
finite  ?  Must  we  not  here  fall  back  on  something  like  a  pre- 
established  harmony  ?  To  this  our  author  would  say:  "Yea, 
verily.  The  fact  that  the  absolute  system  responds  to  the 
finite  needs  does  precisely  show  that  the  finite  and  the  abso- 
lute cannot  be  sundered."  But  when  we  try  to  state  how  the 
purpose  generated  on  the  side  of  the  finite  can  be  met  by 
the  absolute  system,  the  account  again  seems  to  run  so  much 
in  terms  of  the  finite  experience  that  to  call  it  a  system  of 
"final,"  "completed,"  and  "fulfilled"  ideas  does  not  seem 
accurate.  We  must  note  here,  too,  the  shifting  in  the  sense 
of  "purpose."  The  idea  selects  its  object  on  the  basis  of  the 
material  needed  to  relieve  the  unrest  and  dissatisfaction  of 
singing  out  of  tune,  etc.  But  now  it  is  to  be  satisfied  by 
increasing  the  extent  of  its  representation  of  its  object  in  the 
absolute  system. 

And  now,  finally,  what  shall  mark  the  attainment  of  this 
purpose  of  the  idea  to  correspond  and  represent  "its  own 
completed  form "  ?  When  is  the  correspondence  and  repre- 
sentation true?  Simply  at  the  point  where  "we  pause  satis- 
fied," where  "no  other  content  need  be  substituted,  or  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  satisfied  idea  could  be  substituted." 
That  is  all;  there  is  no  other  answer.  There  are  other 
statements,  but  they  all  come  to  the  same  thing.  For 
instance : 

It  is  true — this  instant's  idea — if,  in  its  own  measure,  and 
on  its  own  plan,  it  corresponds,  even  in  its  vagueness,  to  its  own 
final  and  completely  individual  expression.1 

But  the  moment  we   ask  what  this   "final  and  individual 
expression"  is,  and  what  is  meant  by  "in  its  own  measure," 

1P.339. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         369 

and  "on  its  own  plan,"  we  are  thrown  back  at  once  upon  the 
preceding  statement.  The  next  sentence  following  the  pas- 
sage just  quoted  does  indeed  define  this  "  individual  expres- 
sion." "Its  expression  would  be  the  very  life  of  fulfilment 
of  purpose  which  this  present  idea  already  fragmentarily 
begins,  as  it  were,  to  express."  But  how  can  we  know  that 
the  expression  is  "fragmentary"  unless  we  have  some  experi- 
ence of  wholeness? 

And  here  perhaps  is  the  place  to  say,  what  has  been  im- 
plied all  along,  that  this  absolutely  "fragmentary"  character 
of  human  experience  is  an  abstraction  of  the  relatively  dis- 
integrated condition  into  which  experience  temporarily  falls, 
which  abstraction  is  then  reinstated  as  a  fixed  quality,  over- 
looking the  fact  that  experience  becomes  fragmentary  only 
that  it  may  again  become  whole.  The  absolute  system,  the 
final  fulfilment,  is  in  the  same  case.  It  too  is  but  the  hypo- 
statized  abstraction  of  the  function  of  becoming  whole,  of 
wholing  and  fulfilling,  which  manifests  itself  in  the  "pauses 
of  satisfaction." 

"But,"  Mr.  Royce  would  say,  "the  wholeness  of  the  par- 
ticular instance  is  after  all  not  a  true  and  perfect  wholeness, 
because  we  can  always  think  of  the  fulfilling  experience  as 
possibly  different,  as  having  a  possibly  different  embodi- 
ment." But  this  implies  also  a  different  purpose.  More- 
over, it  abstracts  the  purpose  from  the  specific  conditions 
under  which  the  purpose  develops.  Thus  in  singing  in  tune 
one  doubtless  could  easily  imagine  himself  singing  another 
tune,  on  another  occasion,  in  another  key,  in  a  clear  tenor 
instead  of  a  cracked  bass,  etc.  But  if  on  this  occasion,  in 
this  song,  and  with  this  cracked  bass  voice  one,  accepting 
all  these  conditions,  does,  with  malice  aforethought,  purpose 
to  strike  the  tune,  and  happily  succeeds,  why,  for  that  pur- 
pose formed  under  the  known  and  accepted  conditions,  is 
not  the  accomplishment  final  and  absolute?  Nor  is  the 


370  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

case   any   different,  so  far  as  I  can  see,    in   mathematical 
experience.     To  quote  again: 

You  think  of  numbers,  and  accordingly  count  one,  two,  three. 
Your  idea  of  these  numbers  is  abstract,  a  mere  generality.  Why? 
Because  there  could  be  other  cases  of  counting,  and  other  num- 
bers counted  than  the  present  counting  process  shows  you,  and  why 
so?  Because  your  purpose  in  counting  is  not  wholly  fulfilled  by 
the  numbers  now  counted.1 

I  confess  I  cannot  see  here  in  what  respect  the  purpose 
is  not  fulfilled.  Doubtless  there  could  be  "other  cases  of 
counting,"  and  "other  numbers,"  but  these  may  not  be 
included  in  my  present  purpose,  which  is  simply  to  count 
here  and  now.  In  this  passage  the  purpose  is  not  very  fully 
defined.  One's  counting  is  usually  for  something,  if  for 
nothing  more  than  merely  to  illustrate  the  process.  In  this 
latter  case  one's  purpose  would  be  completely  fulfilled  by  just 
the  numbers  used  when  he  should  "  pause  satisfied  "  with  the 
illustration.  Or,  if  I  wish  to  show  the  properties  of  num- 
bers, then  the  discovery  that  there  can  always  be  more  of 
them  fulfils  my  purpose,  since  this  endless  progression  is  one 
of  the  properties.  Or  yet  again,  if  one  should  suddenly 
become  enamored  of  the  process  of  counting,  and  forthwith 
should  purpose  to  devote  the  rest  of  his  days  to  it,  it  would 
still  be  fortunate  that  there  were  always  other  numbers  to  be 
counted.  In  other  words,  the  idea  as  a  purpose  is  formed 
with  reference  to,  and  out  of,  specific  conditions.  In  the  last 
analysis  the  problem  always  is:  What  is  to  be  done  here 
and  now  with  the  actual  material  at  hand,  under  the  present 
conditions  ?  As  the  purpose  is  determined  by  these  specific 
conditions,  so  is  the  fulfilment.  To  say  that  the  fulfilment 
might  be  different  is  virtually  to  say  that  the  purpose  might 
have  been  different,  or  indeed  that  the  universe  might  have 
been  different. 

1P.338. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PUEPOSE         371 

This  necessity  of  falling  back  upon  the  character  of  the 
idea  as  a  purpose  in  the  sense  of  the  specific  "plan  of  action" 
comes  into  still  bolder  relief  in  the  consideration  of  error 
from  the  standpoint  of  "the  absolute  system  of  ideas."  As 
already  mentioned,  the  initial  and  persistent  problem  here  is 
to  distinguish  at  all  between  truth  and  error  in  our  experi- 
ence from  this  standpoint.  All  our  efforts  at  representing 
the  absolute  system  must  fall  short.  What  can  we  mean, 
then,  by  calling  some  of  our  ideas  true  and  others  false? 
The  definition  of  error  is  as  follows : 

An  error  is  an  error  about  a  specific  object,  only  in  case  the 
purpose,  imperfectly  defined  by  the  vague  idea  at  the  instant  when 
the  error  is  made,  is  better  defined,  is  in  fact,  better  fulfilled  by  an 
object  whose  determinate  character  in  some  wise,  although  never 
absolutely,  opposes  the  fragmentary  efforts  first  made  to  define 
them.1 

But  in  relation  to  the  absolute  system  the  later  part  of  this 
statement  holds  of  all  our  ideas.  There  always  is  the  abso- 
lute object  which  would  "better  define"  and  "better  fulfil" 
our  purposes.  Hence  it  is  only  in  reference  to  the  "spe- 
cific" instances  of  singing,  measuring,  etc.,  that  a  basis 
for  the  distinction  can  be  found.  Here  our  plan  is  not  true 
so  long  as  its  mission  of  relieving  the  specific  unrest  and 
dissatisfaction,  the  specific  discord  or  hunger,  is  unfulfilled. 
The  only  criterion,  then,  which  we  have  been  able  to  find 
for  the  fulfilment  of  the  purpose,  for  the  truth  of  the  idea  as 
representing  an  object  in  the  absolute  system,  is  the  sense 
of  wholeness,  the  "pause  of  satisfaction,"  which  we  experi- 
ence in  realizing  such  specific  purposes  as  "singing  in  tune." 
And  if  it  be  said  again:  "Precisely  so;  this  only  shows  how 
intimate  is  the  relation  between  our  experience  and  the  ab- 
solute system  of  ideas;"  then  must  it  also  be  said  once  more, 
either  that  the  absolute  system  can  be  nothing  more  than  an 

IP,  335. 


372  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOKY 

abstraction  of  the  element  of  wholeness  or  wholing  in  our 
experience,  or  that  thus  far  the  relation  appears  to  rest  upon 
sheer  assumption. 

Again,  it  may  be  insisted,  as  suggested  at  the  outset  of 
this  discussion,  that  the  idea  can  well  have  two  purposes: 
one  to  help  constitute  and  solve  the  specific  problems  of 
daily  life ;  the  other  to  represent  the  absolute  system.  Very 
well,  we  must  then  make  out  a  case  for  the  latter.  If  the 
purposes  are  to  be  different,  the  purpose  to  represent  the 
Absolute  should  have  a  criterion  of  its  own.  This  we  have 
not  been  able  to  find.  On  the  contrary,  whenever  pushed 
to  the  point  of  stating  a  criterion  for  the  representation  of 
the  absolute  system,  we  have  had  to  appeal,  in  every  case,  to 
the  fulfilment  of  a  specific  finite  purpose.  And  even  if  this 
purpose  to  represent  the  absolute  system  had  some  apparent 
standard  of  its  own,  we  should  not  be  content  to  leave  the 
matter  so.  We  should  scarcely  be  satisfied  to  observe  as  a 
mere  matter  of  fact  that  the  idea  has  a  reconstructive  func- 
tion, and  also  a  representative  function.  Such  a  brute 
dualism  would  be  intolerable. 

IV.      SUMMARY   AND    CONCLUSIONS 

In  the  end,  the  outcome  of  the  endeavor  to  establish  a 
connection  between  the  relation  of  the  idea  to  human  expe- 
rience and  its  relation  to  the  absolute  system  does  not 
appear  satisfying.  The  idea  is  left  either  with  two  inde- 
pendent purposes — one  to  reconstruct  finite  experience,  the 
other  to  represent  and  symbolize  the  absolute  system — or 
one  of  these  purposes  is  merged  in  the  other.  When  the 
attempt  is  made  from  the  standpoint  of  the  absolute  system, 
the  reconstructive  purpose  is  swallowed  up  in  the  representa- 
tive. When,  on  the  other  hand,  the  need  for  a  basis  of 
distinction  between  truth  and  error  "here  on  this  bank  and 
shoal  of  time"  is  felt,  the  representative  disappears  in  the 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PURPOSE         373 

reconstructive  function.  Nowhere  are  we  able  to  discover  a 
true  unification.  To  be  sure,  we  have  been  told  again  and 
again  that  the  representation  of  the  absolute  object,  if  only 
we  could  accomplish  it,  would  be  "the  final  fulfilment," 
"completion,"  and  "realization"  of  the  human,  finite  pur- 
pose. But  besides  a  confessed  impotency  at  the  very  start, 
this  involves,  as  we  have  seen,  either  a  sudden  transforma- 
tion of  the  specific  purpose  of  singing  in  tune,  etc.,  into  that 
of  representing  the  absolute  system,  or  a  sheer  assumption 
that  the  representation  of  the  absolute  object  does  somehow 
help  in  the  realization  of  the  specific  finite  purpose.  No- 
where is  there  any  account  of  how  this  help  would  be  given. 

And  this  suggests  that  if  the  analysis  of  the  idea  as  pur- 
pose, given  at  the  outset  of  Mr.  Royce's  lecture,  had  been 
developed  further,  if  the  conditions  and  origin  of  purpose 
had  been  examined,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  this  discrepancy 
could  have  escaped  disclosure.  Mr.  Royce  starts  his  account 
by  simply  accepting  from  psychology  a  general  description 
of  the  purposive  character  of  the  idea.  Even  in  the  more 
detailed  passages  on  purpose  we  have  nothing  but  descrip- 
tions of  purpose  after  it  is  formed.  Nothing  is  said  of  the 
origin  of  this  purposiveness.  The  purposive  character  of 
experience  is  of  course  very  manifest,  but  what  is  the  signifi- 
cance of  this  purposing  in  experience  as  a  whole?  What  is 
the  source  and  the  material  of  the  purposes? 

It  is  this  uncritical  acceptance  of  the  purposive  quality 
of  fhe  idea  that  obscures  the  irrelevancy  of  its  relation  to 
the  absolute  system.  If  the  idea  must  merely  be  or  have  a 
purpose,  then  it  may  as  well  be  that  of  representing  the 
absolute  system  as  any  other.  Of  course,  there  are  trouble- 
some questions  as  to  how  our  finite  ideas  ever  got  such  a 
purpose;  but,  after  all,  if  it  is  simply  a  matter  of  having 
any  sort  of  a  purpose,  representing  the  absolute  system  may 
answer  as  well  as  anything.  But  when  now  we  come  to  deal 


374  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

with  the  problem  of  fulfilment,  with  the  question  of  truth 
and  error,  we  have  to  reckon  with  this  neglect  of  the  source 
of  this  purposiveness. 

It  is  this  unanalyzed  ground  of  the  purpose  that  makes 
the  matter  of  fulfilment  so  ambiguous.  Such  an  analysis,  we 
believe,  would  have  shown  that  the  conditions  out  of  which 
the  idea  as  a  purpose  arises  determine  also  the  sort  of  fulfil- 
ment possible.  There  are,  indeed,  one  or  two  very  general, 
but  very  significant,  statements  in  this  direction,  if  they 
were  only  followed  up.  For  instance: 

In  doing  what  we  often  call  "  making  up  our  minds  "  we  pass 
from  a  vague  to  a  definite  state  of  will  and  of  resolution.  In  such 
cases  we  begin  with  perhaps  a  very  indefinite  sort  of  restlessness 
which  arouses  the  question:  "What  is  it  that  I  want,  what  do  I 
desire,  what  is  my  real  purpose?  " 

In  other  words,  what  does  this  restlessness  mean?  What 
is  the  matter?  What  is  to  be  done? 

Purpose  is  born,  then,  out  of  restlessness  and  dissatisfac- 
tion. But  whence  comes  this  restlessness  and  dissatisfaction  ? 
Surely  we  cannot  at  this  point  charge  it  to  a  discrepancy 
between  our  finite  idea  and  the  absolute  object,  since  it  is 
just  this  restlessness  that  is  giving  birth  to  the  purposive 
idea.  One  thing,  at  any  rate,  appears  pretty  certain:  this 
"indefinite  restlessness"  presupposes  some  sort  of  activity 
already  going  on.  The  restlessness  is  not  generated  in  a 
vacuum.  But  why  should  this  activity  get  into  a  condition  to 
be  described  as  "indefinite  restlessness"  and  dissatisfaction ? 

Repugnant  as  it  will  be  to  many  to  have  psycho-physical, 
to  say  nothing  of  biological,  doctrines  introduced  into  a 
logical  discussion,  I  confess  that,  at  this  point  facing  the 
issue  squarely,  I  see  no  other  way.  And  it  appears  to  me  that 
just  at  this  point  it  is  the  fear  of  phenomenalistic  giants  that 
has  kept  logic  wandering  so  many  years  in  the  wilderness. 

What,  then,  in  this  action  already  going  on  is  responsible 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PUEPOSE         375 

for  this  restlessness?  First  let  us  note  that  "indefinite  rest- 
lessness" and  "dissatisfaction"  are  terms  descriptive  of  what 
Mr.  James  calls  "the  first  thing  in  the  way  of  consciousness." 
This  assumes  consciousness  as  a  factor  in  activity.  So  that 
our  question  now  becomes :  What  is  the  significance  of  this 
factor  of  restless,  dissatisfied  consciousness  in  activity  ?  Now, 
there  appears  no  way  of  getting  at  the  part  which  conscious- 
ness plays  different  from  that  of  discovering  the  function  of 
anything  else.  And  this  way  is  simply  that  of  observing,  as 
best  we  may,  the  conditions  under  which  consciousness 
operates,  and  what  it  does.  Here  the  biologist  and  psycholo- 
gist with  one  voice  inform  us  that  this  indefinite  restlessness 
which  marks  the  point  of  the  operation  of  consciousness 
arises  where,  in  a  co-ordinated  system  of  activities,  there 
develop  out  of  the  continuation  of  the  activity  itself  new 
conditions  calling  for  a  readjustment  and  reconstruction  of 
the  activity,  if  it  is  to  go  on.  Consciousness  then  appears 
to  be  the  function  which  makes  possible  the  reorganization 
of  the  results  of  a  process  back  into  the  process  itself,  thus 
constituting  and  preserving  the  continuity  of  activity.  So 
interpreted,  consciousness  appears  to  be  an  essential  element 
in  the  conception  of  a  self-sustaining  activity.  This 
"indefinite  restlessness,"  in  which  consciousness  begins, 
marks,  then,  the  operation  of  the  function  of  reconstruction 
without  which  activity  would  utterly  break  down. 

Precisely  because,  then,  the  idea  "as  a  plan"  is  projected 
and  constructed  in  response  to  this  restlessness  must  its  ful- 
filment be  relevant  to  it.  It  is  when  the  idea  as  a  purpose, 
a  plan,  born  out  of  this  matrix  of  restlessness,  begins  to 
aspire  to  the  absolute  system,  and  attempts  to  ignore  or 
repudiate  its  lowly  antecedents,  that  the  difficulties  concerning 
fulfilment  begin.  They  are  the  difficulties  that  beset  every 
ambition  which  aspires  to  things  foreign  to  its  inherited 
powers  and  equipment. 


376  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

A  detailed  account  at  this  point  of  the  construction  and 
fulfilment  of  the  idea  as  "a  plan  of  action"  would  contain  a 
consecutive  reinterpretation  of  Mr.  Royce's  principal  rubrics. 
Such  an  account  the  limits  of  this  paper  forbid.  We  shall 
have  to  be  content  with  pointing  out  in  a  general  way  a  few 
instances  by  way  of  illustration. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  in  this  matrix  of  indefinite  restless- 
ness out  of  which  the  idea  is  born  that  the  "  fragmentary 
character  of  experience,"  of  which  Mr.  Royce  is  so  keenly 
conscious,  appears.  But,  once  more,  this  fragmentary  char- 
acter is  discernible  only  by  contrast  with  the  wholeness  on 
both  sides  of  the  fragments;  the  wholeness  that  precedes 
the  restlessness,  and  the  new  "pause  of  satisfaction"  toward 
which  it  points.  Nor  must  we  forget  that  the  habit  matrix, 
out  of  the  disintegration  of  which  the  restlessness  is  immed- 
iately born,  does  not  exist  as  some  metaphysical  ultimate  out 
of  which  thought  as  such  has  evolved.  Back  of  it  is  some 
previous  purpose  in  whose  service  habit  was  enlisted.  On 
the  other  hand,  this  disintegration  means  that  the  old  pur- 
pose, the  old  plan,  must  be  reconstructed ;  that  it,  along  with 
the  disintegrated  habit,  becomes  the  material  for  a  new  plan, 
a  new  wholing  of  experience. 

In  the  next  place,  the  construction  of  this  new  plan  of 
action  does  involve  "re-presentation."  The  first  step  in  the 
transition  from  the  condition  of  "indefinite  restlessness" 
toward  a  "plan"  is  the  diagnosis,  the  definition  of  the  restless- 
ness. This  involves  the  re-presentation  in  consciousness  of 
the  activities,  out  of  which  the  restlessness  has  arisen.  This 
re-presentation  is  also  the  beginning  of  the  reconstruction. 
The  diagnosis  of  the  singing  activity  as  being  "out  of  tune" 
is  the  negative  side  of  beginning  to  sing  in  tune.  It  is  now 
a  commonplace  of  psychology  that  all  representation  is 
reconstruction.  And  this  is  where  Mr.  Royce's  emphasis  of 
the  symbolic,  the  algebraic,  as  against  the  copy  type  of  rep- 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PUBPOSE         377 

reservation,  has  its  application.  All  we  want  here  is  some 
sort  of  an  image — visual,  auditory,  motor,  it  matters  not — 
that  shall  serve  to  focus  attention  upon  the  singing  activities 
until  they  are  reconstructed  sufficiently  to  bring  us  to  the 
"pause  of  satisfaction."1  But  nowhere  in  all  this  is  there  any 
reference  to  the  idea's  object  in  the  absolute  system.  Nor 
does  there  appear  to  be  any  call  or  place  for  such  reference. 
The  representation  here  is  a  part  of  the  very  process  of 
forming  the  plan  of  further  reconstruction  out  of  the 
materials  of  the  specific  situation.  Representation  is  not  the 
plan's  own  end  and  aim.  This  is  to  stimulate  a  new  set  of 
activities  that  shall  lead  out  of  the  present  state  of  unrest 
and  dissatisfaction. 

It  is  also  true,  as  already  mentioned,  that  in  the  process 
of  fulfilling  the  plan,  of  realizing  the  idea,  further  determina- 
tion and  specification  is  produced  in  the  plan  itself.  The 
idea  as  a  plan  is  certainly  not  formed  all  at  once.  Nor  does 
it  reach  and  maintain  a  fixed  content.  No  purpose  is  ever 
realized  in  its  original  content.  But  this  does  not  mean 
that  its  realization  is,  therefore,  "partial,"  "incomplete,"  or 
"fragmentary."  It  is  a  part  of  its  business  to  change.  The 
purpose  is  not  there  for  its  own  sake.  The  purpose  is  there 
as  a  means  to  the  reorganization  and  reconstruction  of  expe- 
rience. It  exists,  as  Mr.  Royce  says,  as  an  instrument,  "as  a 
tool"  for  "introducing  control  into  experience."  And  as, 
in  the  process  of  use,  a  tool  always  undergoes  modification, 
so  here,  as  an  instrument  for  reconstructing  habit,  the  plan, 
too,  undergoes  reconstruction.  Indeed,  as  regards  its  con- 
tent, it  is  itself,  as  Mr.  Royce  says,  as  much  a  habit,  as 
much  "the  product  of  association,"  as  any  part  of  experience. 
The  purposing  function,  the  purposing  activity,  remains ;  its 
content  is  constantly  shifting. 

Here,  too,  is  where  "the  submission  of  the  idea  to  the 

i  Cf.  ME.  GOBE'S  paper,  above. 


378  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOBY 

object"  takes  place.  Only,  here,  it  is  not  a  submission  to  an 
object  already  constituted  as  it  is  in  Mr.  Royce's  conception 
of  the  absolute  system.  The  idea  as  an  hypothetical  plan  of 
action,  as  a  trial  construction,  must  be  tested  by  the  activities  it 
is  attempting  to  reconstruct.  That  is  to  say,  at  this  point  the 
question  is:  Does  the  plan  apply  to  the  activities  actually 
involved  in  the  unrest  ?  Has  it  diagnosed  the  case  properly, 
and  is  it  therefore  one  in  and  through  which  these  activities 
can  operate  and  come  to  unity  again?  The  "submission" 
here  is  the  submission  of  the  purpose,  the  end,  to  the 
material  out  of  which  it  is  formed,  and  with  which  it  must 
work.  But  again  this  material  to  which  the  idea  submits 
itself  is  anything  but  finally  fixed  and  "complete"  in  form. 
On  the  contrary,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  just  the  fragmentary 
and  incomplete  condition  of  this  material  that  calls  for  the 
idea.  Yet  the  idea  as  a  plan  must  be  true  to  its  mission, 
and  to  this  material,  and  in  this  sense  must  submit  itself  to 
whatever  modifications  and  reconstruction  the  material  "dic- 
tates" as  necessary  in  order  that  it  may  function  in  and 
through  the  plan.1 

On  the  other  hand — and  this  is  the  point  to  which  Mr. 
Royce  gives  most  emphasis — it  is  equally  apparent  that 
"the  idea'must  determine  its  object."  On  this  all  philosophy, 
from  Plato  down,  which  approaches  reality  "from  the  side  of 
ideas  "  is  at  stake.  And  this  does  not  appear  impossible  if, 
again,  the  object  is  not  already  and  eternally  fixed  and  com- 
plete. If  the  object  is  one  constructed  out  of  the  very 
mass  of  habit  material  which  the  idea  is  reconstructing,  and  if 
"determination"  means  not  copying,  but  construction,  then, 
indeed,  must  the  idea  "determine  its  object."  Just  for  that 

1  Cf.  BALDWIN'S  Development  and  Evolution,  pp.  250,  251,  on  the  necessity  of  the 
submission  of  the  "new  experience"  to  the  test  of  its  ability  to  utilize  habit. 
Interpreted  broadly,  habit  might  here  mean  the  whole  mechanical  side,  including 
organism  and  environment,  and  so  include  Mr.  Baldwin's  second  or  "extra- 
organic"  test. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OF  PUBPOSE         379 

does  it  have  its  being.  That  is  its  sole  mission.  Here  the 
determination  of  the  object  by  the  idea  is  not  a  mere 
abstract  postulate ;  it  is  not  based  upon  a  general  considera- 
tion of  the  disastrous  consequences  to  our  logical  and  ethical 
assumptions,  if  it  were  not  so  determined.  Here  not  only 
the  general  necessity  for  it,  but  the  modus  operandi  of  this 
determination,  is  apparent.  But,  at  the  risk  of  tedious 
iteration,  must  it  again  be  said  that  for  the  determination  of 
the  completed  and  perfected  object  in  the  absolute  system 
not  only  is  there  nowhere  any  modus  to  be  found,  but,  even 
if  there  were,  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  it  would  have  to  do 
with  the  kind  of  determination  demanded  by  such  a  specific 
sort  of  unrest  as  "singing  out  of  tune,"  etc.  The  process  of 
submission  is  thus  a  reciprocal  one.  Neither  in  the  object 
nor  in  the  idea  is  there  a  fixed  scheme  or  order  to  which  the 
other  must  submit  and  conform.  And  this  is  simply  the 
logical  commonplace  that  submission  cannot  be  a  one-sided 
affair,  that  determination  must  be  reciprocal. 

This  brings  us  to  what  might  as  well  have  been  our  intro- 
ductory as  our  concluding  observation.  It  has  just  been 
said  that  the  determination  of  the  object  by  the  idea  is  a 
vital  matter  in  any  philosophy  which  approaches  reality 
"from  the  side  of  ideas."  Such  a  way  of  approach  must 
assert  "the  primacy  of  the  world  of  ideas  over  the  world  as 
a  fact."1  Mr.  Koyce  thus  further  states  the  case: 

I  am  one  of  those  who  hold  that  when  you  ask  what  is  an  idea,  and 
how  can  ideas  stand  in  any  true  relation  to  reality,  you  attack  the 
world  knot  in  the  way  that  promises  most  for  the  untying  of  its 
meshes.  This  way  is  of  course  very  ancient.  It  is  the  way  of 

Plato It  is  in  a  different  sense  the  way  of  Kant.  If  you 

view  philosophy  in  this  fashion,  you  subordinate  the  study  of  the 
world  as  fact  to  a  reflection  upon  the  world  as  idea.  Begin  by 
accepting  upon  faith  and  tradition  the  mere  brute  reality  of  the 
world  as  fact,  and  there  you  are  sunk  deep  in  an  ocean  of  mystery. 

i  p.  19. 


380  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 

....  The  world  of  fact  surprises  you  with  all  sorts  of  strange  con- 
trasts  It  baffles  you  with  caprices  like  a  charming  and  yet 

hopelessly  wayward  child,  or  like  a  bad  fairy.    The  world  of  fact 
daily  announces  itself  to  you  as  a  defiant  mystery.1 

Here  we  have  concisely  stated  at  the  outset  of  the  lectures 
the  position  which  we  have  seen  to  be  fraught  with  so  many 
difficulties:  the  position,  namely,  which  accepts  to  start  with 
the  opposition  of  the  world  as  idea  and  the  world  as  fact,  as 
something  given,  instead  of  something  to  be  accounted  for; 
and  which  assumes  that  this  opposition  stands  in  the  way  of 
reaching  reality,  whereas  it  possibly  may  be  of  the  very 
essence  of  reality.  To  be  sure,  the  above  statement  of  this 
opposition  between  the  -world  as  fact  and  as  idea  is  but  the 
expository  starting-point.  And  it  is  true  that  the  rest  of  the 
argument  is  occupied  in  the  attempt  to  close  this  breach. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  except  where  the  idea  is  expounded  as 
a  specific  purpose,  arising  out  of  a  specific  experience  of 
unrest,  such  as  singing  out  of  tune,  etc. — except  in  this  case, 
the  breach  is  taken  as  found  and  the  attempt  to  heal  it  is 
made  by  working  forward  from  the  opposition  as  given  instead 
of  back  to  its  source.  This  opposition,  of  course,  has  its 
forward  goal,  but  the  difficulty  is  to  find  it  without  an  explo- 
ration of  fts  source.  It  is  back  in  that  matrix  out  of  which 
the  opposition  has  arisen  that  the  line  of  direction  to  the 
goal  is  to  be  found. 

Moreover,  in  starting  from  this  opposition  of  fact  and  idea 
as  given,  the  only  method  of  quelling  it  seems  to  be  either 
that  of  reducing  one  side  to  terms  of  the  other,  or  of  appeal- 
ing to  some  new,  and  therefore  external  unifying,  agency. 
But  if  the  factors  in  the  opposition  are  found,  not  one  in 
submission  to  the  other,  nor  having  the  "primacy"  over  the 
other,  but  as  co-ordinate  and  mutually  determining  func- 
tions, developed  from  a  common  matrix  and  co-operating 

1  Pp.  17, 18. 


SOME  LOGICAL  ASPECTS  OP  PUKPOSE         381 

in  the  work  of  reconstructing  experience,  some  of  the  diffi- 
culties involved  in  the  alternative  methods  just  mentioned 
appear  to  drop  out1 

The  point  may  be  clearer  if  we  recur  to  the  passage  and 
ask  just  what  is  meant  by  "the  defiantly  mysterious," 
"baffling,"  and  "capricious"  character  of  the  world  as  fact — 
as  "brute  reality."  First,  if  by  the  world  as  "fact,"  as 
"brute  reality,"  we  mean  experience  so  brute  that  it  is  not 
yet  "lighted  up  with  ideas.,"  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  could 
be  mysterious  or  capricious,  since  mystery  and  caprice  appear 
only  when  experience  ceases  to  be  taken  merely  as  it  comes 
and  an  inquiry  for  connections  and  meanings  has  begun. 
That  is  to  say,  there  can  be  neither  mystery  nor  caprice  except 
in  relation  to  some  sort  of  order.  And  order  is  always  a 
matter  of  ideas.  But  it  is  sufficient  to  submit  Mr.  Royce's 
own  statement  on  this  point: 

We  all  of  us  from  moment  to  moment  have  experience.  This 
experience  comes  to  us  in  part  as  brute  fact;  light  and  shade,  sound 

and  silence,  pain  and  grief  and  joy These  given  facts  flow  by; 

and  were  they  all,  our  world  would  be  too  much  of  a  blind  prob- 
lem for  us  even  to  be  puzzled  by  its  meaningless  presence.2 

If  next  we  take  the  world  of  fact  as  in  contrast  and  co- 
ordinate with  the  world  of  ideas,  mystery  and  caprice  here, 
certainly,  are  not  all  on  the  side  of  the  fact.  Here,  again,  must 
they  be  functions  of  the  relation  between  fact  and  idea.  We 
have  seen  that  without  thought  there  is  neither  mystery  nor 
caprice.  The  idea  then  cannot  take  part  in  the  production 
of  mystery  and  caprice,  and  forthwith  deny  its  parenthood. 
Of  course,  mystery  and  caprice  are  not  the  final  fruits  of 
this  co-ordinate  opposition  of  fact  and  idea.  They  are  but 
the  first  fruits — the  relatively  unorganized  embryonic  mass 
which  through  the  further  activities  of  the  parent  functions 
shall  develop  into  the  symmetry  of  truth  and  law. 

i  See ,  above,  PROFESSOR  DEWEY'S  Study  III,  pp.  49  ff .  2  p.  55. 


382  STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 

There  appears  then  no  ultimate  "primacy"  of  either  idea 
or  fact  over  the  other.  Nor  does  either  appear  as  a  better 
way  of  approach  to  reality  than  the  other.  It  is  only  when 
we  say:  "Lo!  here  in  the  idea,"  or  "Lo!  there  in  the  fact 
is  reality,"  that  we  find  it  "imperfect,"  "incomplete,"  and 
"fragmentary,"  and  must  straightway  "look  for  another." 
But  surely  not  in  "a  certain  absolute  system  of  ideas," 
which  is  "the  object  of  love  and  hope,  of  desire  and  will,  of 
faith  and  work,  but  never  of  present  finding,"  shall  we  seek 
it.  Rather  precisely  in  the  loving  and  hoping,  desiring  and 
willing,  believing  and  working,  shall  we  find  that  reality  in 
which  and  for  which  both  the  "World  as  fact"  and  the 
"World  as  idea"  have  their  being. 


INDEX 


ABSOLUTE:  as  constituting  reality,  348; 
as  related  to  truth  and  error,  363  &. ; 
as  a  hypostatized  abstraction,  369. 

ABSOLUTE  SELF,  330. 

ACCESSORY  :  thought  as,  58  ff. 

ACTIVITY  :  as  social,  74 ;  thought  as,  78 ; 
interrupted,  and  judgment,  154;  and 
hypothesis,  170;  as  sensori-motor,  193, 
200;  (see  Function,  Reconstruction). 

JSSTHETIC  EXPERIENCE  :  appreciative 
rather  than  reflective,  255 ;  not  a  form 
of  valuation,  339,  340. 

ALTERNATIVES:  in  judgment,  155;  (see 
Disjunction). 

ANALOGY,  171,  172,  175;  in  relation  to 
habit,  176. 

ANAXAGORAS  :  in  relation  to  the  One  and 
the  Many,  219;  his  coOs,  220,  221. 

ANAXIMANDER:  and  the  infinite,  209;  his 
process  of  segregation,  214,  215. 

ANAXIMENES:  his  apyij  air,  209 ;  his  scheme 
of  rarefaction  and  condensation,  209, 
213,  215,  224. 

ANGELL,  J.  B.,  14  note,  345  note. 

ANIMISM,  49  note. 

ANTECEDENTS  OF  THOUGHT  (see  Stimu- 
lus). 

APPLIED  LOGIC  :  Lotze's  definition,  6. 

APPRECIATION:  distinguished  from  re- 
flection. 255.  339;  not  to  be  identified 
with  valuation,  320-24,  338. 

'Apx*? :  meaning  of  search  for,  211  ff . 

ASSOCIATION  OF  IDEAS  :  refers  to  mean- 
ings, 33,  34;  connection  with  thought, 
80;  doctrine  of:  analogous  to  subjec- 
tivism in  ethics,  261;  presupposes  a 
mechanical  metaphysics,  330,  331  note. 

ATOMISTS  :  treatment  of  the  One  and  the 
Many,  221. 

AUSTRIAN  ECONOMISTS,  307,  333. 

AUTHORITY  AND  CUSTOM:  logic  of  atti- 
tude of  obedience  to,  286;  social  con- 
ditions compatible  with  dominance  of, 
286 ;  failure  of,  as  moral  control,  286. 

BACON:  extreme  empirical  position,  156 
ff. ;  view  of  induction,  157, 158. 

"  BAD  " :  practical  significance  of,  as  mor- 
al predicate,  259;  relation  to  "wrong," 
335. 

BALDWIN,  J.  M.,  257  note,  378  note. 

BECOMING:  as  relative,  206. 

"  BEGRUNDUNG  "  AND  "  BESTATIGTJNG  " : 
Wundt's  distinction  of,  179 ;  criticised, 
181, 182. 

BIOLOGY  :  view  of  sensation,  58 ;  use  of, 
in  logic,  374,  375. 


BOSANOUET,  B.,  59  note,  147, 189, 190, 191» 
300;  (see  Study  V). 

BRADLEY,  F.  H.,  47  note,  54  note,  90  ff., 
147, 189, 190, 191, 192,  194,  299  note  2,  331 
note,  332  note,  353. 

BRENTANO,  250  note. 

BUTLER,  J.,  277. 

CERTAIN,  THE  :  relation  to  tension,  50, 51 ; 
as  datum,  57. 

COEFFICIENTS  OF  REALITY,  PERCEPTION, 
AND  RECOGNITION  :  defined,  263-7 ;  pres- 
ent in  economic  and  ethical  experience. 
267-9. 

COEXISTENCE,  COINCIDENCE,  AND  COHER- 
ENCE, 28,  29,  33-6,  58,  59,  68. 

CONCEPTIONS:  Lotze's  view  of,  59;  Ba- 
con's attitude  toward,  157 ;  relation  to 
fact,  168 ;  function  in  Greek  philosophy, 
342;  (see  Idea,  Image,  Hypothesis). 

CONCEPTUAL  LOGIC:  as  related  to  idea 
and  image,  188-92. 

CONSCIENCE  :  evolution  of.  286,  287 ;  am- 
biguous and  transitional  character  of, 
287;  metaphysical  implications  of,  as 
moral  standard,  288 ;  not  autonomous, 
288. 

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS:  dangers  oft  conse- 
quent upon  ideal  of  self-realization, 
316;  Green's  defense  of,  referred  to, 
316  note. 

CONSERVATION  :  of  energy  and  mass,  206;. 
(see  Energy). 

CONTENT  OF  KNOWLEDGE:  and  logical 
object,  originates  in  tension,  49; 
thought's  own,  65;  and  datum,  69;  as 
truth,  79  ff . ;  as  static  and  dynamic,  73, 
93  ff.,  110  ff. ;  (see  Study  IV;  Objectivity, 
Validity). 

CONTINUITY,  10, 13,  55. 

CONTROL  :  idea  and,  75, 129. 

CONVERSION  OF  PROPOSITIONS,  171;   in 

relation  to  habit,  176. 
COPERNICUS:  his  theory,  178;  compared 

with  Galileo's  supposition,  179-81. 
COPULA,  118  ff . ;   scheme  of   mediation 

between   subject   and  predicate,  208, 

CORRESPONDENCE:  of  datum  and  idea, 
51;  of  thoughdMxmtent  and  thought- 
activity,  70;  as  criterion  of  truth,  82  if., 
353  ff. 

DARWIN,  CHARLES,  146, 150, 179. 

DATUM  OF  THOUGHT,  7,  8,  24 ;  as  fact,  26, 
50,  52;  Lotze's  theory  of,  stated,  55; 
criticised,  56  ff. ;  relation  to  induction, 
61 ;  and  content,  60,  70 ;  (see  Study  III; 
Content,  Fact,  Stimulus). 


383 


384 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 


DEDUCTION,  211,  212. 

DEFINITION  :  invented  by  Socrates,  203. 

DEMOCKITUS  :  attempts  at  definition,  203. 

DEMONSTRATIVE  JUDGMENT,  134. 

DETERMINATION:  as  criterion  of  truth, 
362  ff. ;  impossibility  of  complete,  in 
finite  experience,  364. 

DEWEY,  JOHN,  58  note,  86  note,  266  note  2, 
316  note,  381  note. 

DIALECTIC  :  Zeno  as  originator  of,  203. 

DIOGENES  OF  APOLLONIA,  222  ff. 

DISJUNCTION:  in  judgment,  115, 138. 

DYNAMIC:  ideas  as,  and  as  static,  73,  76; 
reality  as,  126. 

EARTH  :  as  an  element,  213. 

ECONOMIC  JUDGMENT:  involves  same 
type  of  process  as  physical,  235;  a  pro- 
cess of  valuation,  236 ;  type  of  situation 
evoking,  241-6,  293-5,  302,  303;  distin- 
guished from  ethical,  243  note,  246  note, 
271,  302,  303;  relation  to  physical,  246 
note  3;  subject  of,  the  means  of  action, 
259,  304;  analysis  of  process  of,  304-12: 
distinguished  from  "pull  and  h'aul," 
237,  238 ;  psychological  account  of,  310, 
311 ;  a  reconstructive  process,  311,  312. 

"EGOISM,  NEO-HEGELIAN,"  316. 

EHRENFELS,  C.  VON,  318  note. 

EIDOLA:  Bacon's  view  of,  157. 

ELEATICS  :  their  logical  position,  216  ff. 

ELEMENTS  :  as  four,  213 ;  as  infinite,  213  ff . 

EMERSON,  E.  W.,  204,  246  note. 

EMPEDOCLES:  attempts  at  definition, 
203;  treatment  of  the  One  and  the 
Many,  218  ff. 

EMPIRICISM,  11,  29,  47,  48,  61  ff. ;  and  ra- 
tionalism, 80;  criticised,  156;  Jevons, 
169 ;  treatment  of  imagery,  186-8. 

ENDS  :  controlling  factors  in  acquisition 
of  knowledge,  229 ;  may  themselves  be 
objects  of  attention  and  judgment,  233 ; 
judgment  of,  Inseparable  from  factual 
judgment,  234 ;  C9nflict  of,  related,  the 
occasion  for  ethical  judgment,  238-41; 
indirect  conflict  of  unrelated,  the  occa- 
sion for  economic  judgment,  241-3;  the 
subject-matter  of  ethical  judgment, 
258,  259;  definition  of,  the  goal  of  all 
judgment,  264,  272 ;  not  always  explicit 
in  judgment-process,  269,  270;  nature 
of  relation  between,  in  ethical  judg- 
ment, 273,  274,  291,  292;  types  of  factual 
condition  implied  in  acceptance  of,  275, 
276;  warranted  by  factual  judgment, 
276 ;  nature  of,  unrelatedness  of,  in  eco- 
nomic judgment,  293-5,  302,  303;  (see 
Purpose). 

ENERGY:  principle  of  conservation  of, 
206,  299,  300;  not  valid  in  sphere  of  val- 
uation, 328. 

"ENERGY-EQUIVALENCE":  principle  of, 
in  economic  judgment,  308,  309 ;  mean- 
ing of,  309  note. 

EPISTEMOLOGY,  5-7, 10, 11, 13, 17. 18,  47,  73, 
341 ;  origin  of  problem  of,  344,  345. 


ERDMANN,  BENNO:  concerning  induc- 
tion, 173. 

ERROR:  criterion  of,  371. 

ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  :  involves  same  type 
of  process  as  physical,  235;  a  process 
of  valuation,  236,  332 ;  type  of  situation 
evoking,  237-41,  291-4;  distinguished 
from  mechanical  "pull  and  haul" 
between  ends,  237,  238;  distinguished 
from  economic  judgment,  243  note,  246 
note,  271,  302,  303;  subject  of,  an  end  of 
action,  258;  analysis  of  process  of,  295- 
302;  a  reconstructive  process,  295,  299. 

EXISTENCE  :  versus  meaning,  216,  217. 

EXPERIENCE:  duality  of ,  16 ;  logic  of,  19- 
21;  how  organized,  42;  relation  of 
thought  to  organization  of,  43-8;  as 
disorganized,  75 ;  (see  Absolute,  Func- 
tions) . 

EXPERIMENT  :  as  form  of  deduction,  212. 

FACT  :  as  equivalent  to  datum,  26,  50  ff. ; 
criteria  for  determining,  106  ff. ;  as 
reality,  110;  in  relation  to  both  idea 
and  reality,  380  ff. ;  and  theory,  conflict 
between,  150,  151 ;  mutual  dependence 
of,  168;  WheweU's  view  of,  163;  (see 
Datum,  Idea,  Reality,  Truth). 

FACTUAL  JUDGMENT  :  inadequate  to  com- 
plete mediation  of  conduct,  230-34; 
controlled  by  ends,  269;  incidental  to 
judgments  of  valuation,  272,  295 ;  types 
of,  implied  in  acceptance  of  an  end, 
275,  276;  presents  warrant  for  accep- 
tance of  ends,  277. 

FITE,  W.,  331  note. 

FRAGMENTARY,  72 ;  as  quality  of  internal 
meaning,  360,  361;  as  an  attribute  of 
finite  experience,  364,376;  (see  Stimu- 
lus, Tension). 

FUNCTIONS:  of  experience,  16;  logic  of, 
18,  23;  distinguished  from  status,  16; 
of  thought,  23,  24,  78,  85;  total,  as 
stimulus  to  thought,  36-8,  80 ;  different, 
and  logical  distinctions,  42;  different, 
confused  by  Lotze,  56 ;  sensations  as,  58. 

GENETIC  :  method,  significance  of,  14, 15, 
187 ;  distinctions,  importance  of,  24,  53, 
62,  71,  85;  effect  of  ignoring,  53,  62,  71; 
(see  Psychology). 

"GOOD":  practical  significance  of,  as 
moral  predicate,  259;  relation  to 
"right/' 335. 

GORE,  W.  C.,  377  note. 

GORGIAS,  225. 

GREEK  VIEW  or  THOUGHT  AND  REALITY, 
342  ff. 

GREEN,  T.  H.,  274  note,  288  note  3,  315 
note,  316  note,  330,  331. 

HABIT:  relation  of  judgment  to,  inter- 
ruption and  resumption  of,  154;  and 
hypothesisr!70 ;  and  analogy,  176 ;  and 
simple  enumeration,  176;  and  conver- 
sion, 176;  and  logical  meaning,  198; 
logical  function  of,  375,  376. 

HERACLITUS  :  his  position,  215  ff. 

HIPPO,  209. 


INDEX 


385 


HOBBES,  THOMAS,  301. 

HOMOGENEITY  :  of  the  world-ground,  207 ; 
of  the  world,  209,  210. 

HUTCHESON,  F.,  301. 

HYPOTHESIS,  nature  of,  VII,  143-83;  un- 
equal stress  commonly  laid  on  its 
origin,  structure,  and  function,  143-5; 
relation  of  data  and  hypothesis  strictly 
correlative,  145,  152,  168 ;  as  predicate, 
146, 183 ;  negative  and  positive  sides  of, 
146,  155;  came  to  be  recognized  with 
rise  of  experimentalism,  159;  and  test, 
174,  175,  177  ff . ;  origin  of,  170,  171  ff . ; 
supposition  and,  178 ;  interdependence 
of  formation  and  test  of,  182. 

IDEA:  continuous  with  fact,  9,  10,  12; 
distinction  from  fact,  13,  110;  Lotze's 
confusion  regarding,  31,  32,  41,  65; 
association  of,  33 ;  contrast  with  datum, 
52-4;  functional  conception  of,  70,  112 
ff. ;  objective  validity  of,  72-5 ;  as  entire 
content  of  judgment,  119;  existential 
aspect  of,  97,  99  ff.,  113;  in  relation  to 
reference,  97  ff.,  103,  129;  representa- 
tional theory  of\  100  ff.,  113  ff ,  141,  347 
ff.,  372  ff. ;  universality  of,  97  ff.,  113  ff. ; 
as  not  referred  to  reality2  97  ff. ;  as 
forms  of  control,  129;  function  in  judg- 
ment, 153,154;  distinguished  from 
image,  183-93;  distinction  criticised, 
199-202;  problems  accompanying  dis- 
covery of,  341;  in  Greek  thought,  342; 
instrumental  and  representative  func- 
tions of,  346  ff.,  372  ff. ;  purposive  char- 
acter or,  347  ff. ;  external  and  internal 
meaning  of,  347  ff. ;  Royce's  absolute 
system  of,  348;  triple  relation  to 
purpose  in  Royce's  account,  349  ff. ; 
logical  versus  memorial,  351 ;  in  rela- 
tion to  fact  and  reality,  379  ff.;  (see 
Hypothesis,  Image,  Predicate). 

IDEAS  :  Platonic,  247. 

IMAGE:  as  merely  fanciful,  53;  in  rela- 
tion to  meaning,  54;  place  of,  in  judg- 
ment, 154;  distinction  from  idea,  189- 
93;  distinction  criticised,  199-202;  as 
direct  and  indirect  stimulus,  195-7. 

IMAGERY:  empirical  criteria  of,  186; 
function  of,  187;  as  representative, 
186-8,  194;  psychological  function  of, 
193-7;  logical  function  of,  198, 199. 

IMMEDIATE:  as  related  to  mediation, 
342,  350  ff. 

IMPRESSION  :  Lotze's  definition  of,  27, 28, 
29,  32;  9bjective  determination  of,  30, 
81;  objective  quality  of,  31,  68;  as 
psychic,  53;  as  transformed  by  thought 
into  meanings  or  ideas,  67  ff. ;  (see 
Idea,  Meaning,  Sensation). 

INDETERMINATE:  as  quality  of  finite 
experience,  364. 

INDUCTION:  Bacon's  view  of,  157;  by 
enumeration  and  allied  processes,  171 ; 
and  habit,  176;  versus  deduction,  211, 
212. 

INFERENCE:  Lotze's  view  of,  60;  in  rela- 
tion to  judgment,  117. 

INSTRUMENTAL  :  as  character  of  thought, 
78-82,  128,  140,  346  ff.,  372  ff. ;  (see  Pur- 
pose). 


INTERACTION  :  physical,  218  ff . 

INTEREST  :  direction  of,  205. 

INVENTION  :  form  of  deduction,  212. 

JAMES,  WILLIAM,  81  note,  352  note,  375. 

JEVONS,  W.  STANLEY,  169, 173. 

JONES,  HENRY,  43  note,  59  note,  66. 

JUDGMENT:  Lotze's  definition  of,  59  and 
note;  relation  of,  to  ideas,  60;  struc- 
ture of,  75  note ;  Bosanquet's  theory  of, 
86  ff. ;  as  a  function,  107  ff. ;  dead  and 
live,  108;  definition  of,  86,  111;  relation 
to  inference,  116  ff. ;  limits  of  single, 
123  ff. ;  negative,  114  ff. :  of  perception, 
88  ff.,  96;  parts  of,  118  ff.,  207,  208;  time 
relations  of,  120  ff. ;  as  individual,  136; 
as  instrumental,  128,  140;  as  categori- 
cal and  hypothetical,  136;  as  imper- 
sonal, 131;  as  intuitive,  139;  various 
definitions  of,  147  ff. ;  analysis  of,  149 
ff. ;  disjunctive,  155;  psychology  of, 
153;  purpose  of ,  154;  and  interrupted 
activity,  154;  unique  system  of,  224- 
30;  general  analysis  of,  230-32;  pur- 
posive character  of,  353  ff. ;  universal, 
354;  particular,  358;  individual,  359, 
360;  mathematical,  354  ff.,  370;  (see 
Economic,  Ethical,  Factual  judgments, 
Copula,  Predicate,  Reflection,  Subject). 

KANT,  I.,  43,  46,  60  note,  163,  263,  301. 

KEPLER,  146, 181. 

KNOWLEDGE:  in  relation  to  reality,  102 
ff. ;  meaning  and,  128,  "copy"  and 
"instrumental"  theories  of,  129,  140, 
141 ;  (see  Judgment,  Truth). 

KULPE,  O.,  250  note. 

LOGIC:  origin  of,  4;  types  of,  5-22;  as 
generic  and  specific,  18, 23 ;  relations  to 
psychology,  14, 15, 63,  64, 184, 185, 192  ff. ; 
effect  of  modern  psychology  upon,  345 ; 
relation  to  genetic  method,  15-18: 
problems  illustrated,  19,  20;  social 
significance  of,  20;  eristic  the  source 
of  formal,  203;  pre-Socratic,  203;  and 
epistemology,  341,  342;  (see  Episte- 
mology,  Psychology). 

LOTZE:  criticised,  Studies  II,  III,  IV; 
applied  logic,  6 ;  thought  as  accessory, 
56;  view  of  judgment,  147;  similarity 
between  him  and  Whewell,  165  note; 
quoted,  6,  28,  29,  30,  31,  32,  42,  56  note, 
62,  63,  64,  66,  66,  67,  68,  69,  73,  77,  83,  84. 

MANY:  the,  and  the  One,  210  ff.,  218  ff. 

MARGINAL  UTILITY:  principle  of,  307, 
337  note. 

MARTINEAU,  J.,  262. 

MATHEMATICS:  certain  forms  of  proof 
in,  172  ff. ;  judgments  of,  354  ff.,  370. 

McGiLVARY,  E.  B.,  257  note. 

MEAD,  G.  H.,  38  note,  337  note. 

MEANING  :  and  logical  idea,  30,  31,  32,  33, 
41,  97 ;  as  content  of  thought,  66  ff. ; 
three  types  of,  68 ;  as  property  of  inde- 
pendent idea,  73-5 ;  and  association  of 
ideas,  33,  80;  and  reference,  97;  world 
of,  98, 103,  112;  and  knowledge,  89, 128, 
190;  equivalent  to  response,  198;  versus 
existence,  216-18;  inner  and  outer, 
347  ff. ;  (see  Content,  Idea,  Reference). 


386 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEOEY 


MEANS:  as  external  and  constitutive, 
78;  reapplication  of,  the  problem  of 
economic  valuation,  242,  243,  246,  259, 
260,  303,  304;  objective  in  so  far  as  not 
known  adequately  for  one's  purpose, 
256;  definition  of,  incidental  to  all 
judgment,  272;  factual  determination 
of,  sometimes  determinative  of  ends 
also,  270. 

MEDIATION:  in  relation  to  the  immedi- 
ate, 350  ff. 

MELISSUS  :  his  dialectic,  214. 

METAPHYSICS,  8,  9,  13,  18,  85 ;  and  logic 
of  experience,  13;  as  natural  history, 
13-18;  worth,  19-22;  logical  and,  72,  74; 
(see  Epistemology,  Logic). 

MILL,  J.  STUAET,  147, 160  ff.,  162, 166. 

MIXTURE:  logical  meaning  of  idea  of, 
219,  220,  222. 

MONISM,  224. 

MOOBE,  A.  W.,  76  note,  346  note. 

MOTION  :  conservation  of,  206, 

NEGATION,  97, 114  ff. 

NEO-HEGELIAN,  43,  316. 

NEWTON,  I.,  146,  159,  179;  his  notes  for 
philosophizing,  159  note. 

Nofiw  versus  $v<rei,  226. 

NORMATIVE  AND  GENETIC,  16;  (see  End, 
Purpose,  Validity,  Value). 

OBEDIENCE  :  a  factor  in  genesis  of  moral- 
ity, 257  (see  also  Authority  and  Cus- 
tom). 

OBJECT  :  how  denned,  38,  39,  74,  76 ;  soci- 
ally current,  230;  real,  individual 
insignificance,  230;  nature  of  the  ethi- 
cal, 240,  328;  of  the  economic,  259,  260, 
328;  (see  Substance). 

OBJECTIVITY:  Lotze's  view  of,  68  (see 
Study  IV) ;  types  of,  68 ;  Lotze's  distinc- 
tion of  logical  and  ontological,  72,  73: 
distinction  denied,  341,  342;  scope  of 
conception  of,  235;  commonly  denied 
to  other  than  «f  actual  judgments,  247, 
248;  not  a  property  of  sense-elements 
as  such,  248,  249 ;  a  category  of  "  apper- 
ception," 250;  a  mark  of  the  proble- 
matic as  such,  250,  251,  255;  not  ascer- 
tainable  by  any  specific  method,  252; 
"obtrusiveness"  as  evidence  of,  253; 
"reliability"  as  evidence  of,  263;  con- 
ditions of  experience  of,  253-6;  condi- 
tions of,  present  in  the  ethical  and 
economic  situations,  257-60;  a  real 
characteristic  of  ethical  and  economic 
judgment,  261-3;  not  dependent  on 
social  currency,  318-20;  nor  on  possi- 
bility of  social  currency,  320-24;  nor 
on  permanence,  324-9;  (see  Reality, 
Validity). 

ONE:  the,  and  the  Many,  210  ff.,  218  ff. 

PARMENIDES:  his  logical  position,  216 
ff. ;  influence  on  Platonic-Aristotelian 
logic,  217. 

PARTICIPATION  :  significance  of,  in  Plato, 
342  ff. 

PARTICULARITY:  of  an  idea,  99, 113;  of  a 
judgment,  358. 


PERCEPTION:  judgments  of,  88  ff.,  96. 
PERFECT,  THE,  126. 

PHYSICAL  JUDGMENT  (see  Factual  judg- 
ment). 

$vo-ei  versus  vony,  226. 

*w«,  207,  224. 

PLATO,  53  note;  on  ideas  and  reality, 
342  ff.,  378,  379. 

PLURALISM,  81  note. 

POSITING  :  thought  as,  68. 

PREDICATE  :  how  constituted,  75  note ;  in 
relation  to  reality,  101, 103 ;  as  hypothe- 
sis, 147,  153,  155,156,  183,  186;  develops 
out  of  imaged  end,  232;  interaction 
with  subject,  232;  in  ethical  judgment, 
258,  291-3;  in  economic,  259,  260,  509-11 ; 
(see  Copula,  Judgment,  Hypothesis, 
Idea,  Image). 

PREDICATION,  118  ff. 

PRE-ESTABLISHED  HARMONY:  inEoyce's 
philosophy,  368. 

PRESUPPOSITIONS,  204,  206. 

PROBLEMATIC  (see  Tension). 

PROOF:  inductive,  172,  173;  of  hyppthe- 
sis,  174,  175;  relation  of,  to  origin  of 
hypothesis,  179-82;  Wundt's  view  of, 
177, 178. 

PROPOSITION  :  and  judgment,  118. 

PROTAGORAS,  226. 

PRUDENCE  :  ethical  status  of,  as  a  virtue, 
246. 

PYTHAGOREANS,  THE  :  their  logical  posi- 
tion, 216 ;  use  of  experiment,  216. 

PSYCHICAL  :  distinguished  from  physical, 
25 ;  Lotze's  view  of  impression  as  bare- 
ly, 27,  28, 30 1 ;  view  criticised,  31-4, 41t  42 ; 
two  meanings  of,  38  note;  psychical 
mechanism,  31;  idea  as,  53;  problem  of 
logical  and,  54  and  note,  64 ;  activity  of 
thought  also  made,  by  Lotze,  77  and 
note;  subjective  result,  84;  (see  Im- 
pression). 

PSYCHOLOGY:  and  logic,  14-16,  26,  63,  64, 
153,154,184,  185,  192  ff.,  345,  348;  prin- 
ciple of,  functional,  229,  230;  genesis  of, 
280, 281 ;  logical  value  of  functional,  293. 

PSYCHOLOGISTS'  FALLACY,  37. 

PURPOSE  :  logical  importance  of,  4,  9, 10, 
13, 15, 20, 35, 58, 76, 80, 154 ;  logical  aspects 
of,  Study  XI ;  in  an  idea,  347  ff. ;  in 
judgment,  353  ff . ;  in  criterion  of  truth 
and  error,  361  ff. ;  origin  of,  as  idea,  373 
ff. ;  as  method,  377;  (see  End,  Recon- 
struction). 

QUALES  :  of  sensation,  55,  56,  60  note. 

QUALITIES  :  primary  and  secondary,  221. 

QUESTION  :  and  judgment,  97, 114  ff. 

RATIONALISM:  criticised,  156  ff.,  188  ff., 
298  ff. 

EATIONALITY:  of  world,  206. 

REALITY  :  as  constructed  by  thought,  94 
ff.,104;  as  developing,  126 ;  as  including 
fact  and  idea,  108, 110, 125,  382;  as  inde- 
pendent of  thought,  85,  87  ff.,  104;  as 


INDEX 


387 


subject  of  subject,  88  ff. ;  popular  cri- 
terion of,  105  ff. ;  possibility  of  knowl- 
edge of.  91  ff .,  102  ff.,  125 ;  for  the  individ- 
ual, 94  ff .,  103, 112,  224  ff. ;  as  relative  to 
judging,  149 ;  as  given  in  sensation,  160; 
"perception"  and  "recognition"  co- 
efficients of,  263-7,  277 ;  these  present  in 
ethical  and  economical  experience, 
267-9;  apprehension  of ,  emotional,  263; 
scope  of  complete  conception  of,  235, 
340;  degrees  of,  340;  Platonic  concep- 
tion of,  343  ff . ;  Royce's  conception  of, 
348;  as  related  to  fact  and  idea,  379  ff. ; 
(see  Fact,  Truth,  Validity). 
REASON,  SUFFICIENT  :  principle  of,  206. 

RECONSTEUCTION  :  the  function  of  think- 
ing, 38,  40,  46,  75,  76,  85;  effect  of  deny- 
ing this,  47,  71,  72;  data  and,  49  ff.;  in 
judgment,  154;  291,  295,  299,  311,  312,  346, 
347;  (see  Habit,  Stimulus,  Tension). 

REFEEENCE:  as  social,  74;  problem  of 
reference  of  ideas,  82  ff. ;  as  meaning, 
97  ff . ;  functional  conception  of,  113 ; 
paradox  of,  99;  idea  as,  129. 

REFLECTION:  as  derived,  1-12;  naive,  3, 
9;  subject-matter  of,  7,  8;  logic  and, 
3,  18,  23;  versus  constitutive  thought, 
43-8;  distinguished,  255;  general  nature 
of,  269 ;  end  not  always  explicit  in,  270 ; 
outcome  of,  statable  in  terms  of  end  or 
means,  272;  (see  Judgment,  Thought). 

REFLECTIVE  JUDGMENT,  134. 

REPEESENT ATION  :  as  one  of  the  two  func- 
tions of  an  idea,  345,  347  ff.,  372;  signifi- 
cance of,  in  ideal  reconstruction,  376. 

RESPONSE  :  failure  of,  and  origin  of  judg- 
ment, 154. 

RESTLESSNESS:  as  source  of  reflection 
and  purpose,  374  ff. ;  (see  Tension). 

RHETOEIC  :  origin  of,  203,  204. 

"RIGHT"  (see  "Good"). 

ROYCE,  JOSIAH  :  referred  to,  76  note,  147 ; 
theory  of  ideas  discussed,  346-82; 
quoted,  347,  348,  349,  350,  &52,  353,  354,  355, 
356,  357,  358,  &59,  362,  364,  366  note,  368, 
370,371,374,379,380,381. 

SATISFACTION  :  pause  of,  as  marking  at- 
tainment of  truth,  362  ff . 

SCHILLEE,  F.  C.  S.,  327  note,  345  note. 

SCIENCE:  relation  to  naive  experience, 
10,  11;  its  historic  stages,  11,  12;  dis- 
tinction of  logical  procedure  from 
epistemology,  13 ;  same  history  as  phi- 
losophy, 21,  22. 

SELF,  EMPIEICAL  :  genesis  and  content 
of  concept  of,  290,  292,  331,  332  note  1. 

SELF,  "  ENEEGETIC  " :  implied  in  experi- 
ence of  "warrant,"  277,  278;  stimulus 
to  development  of  concept  of  empirical 
self,  279-81;  essential  principle  in  all 
valuation,  281-5;  evolution  of  moral 
attitude  of  reference  to,  285-9 ;  logical 
function  of7  in  valuation,  296;  impor- 
tant place  in  economic  valuation,  308, 
309 ;  not  capable  of  being  described  in 
terms  of  purpose  or  ideal,  313-16 ;  Brad- 
ley's  misinterpretation  of,  332  note. 


SELF- BE ALIZ ATION  (see  also  Green,  T. 
H.):  theory  of,  as  moral  ideal  futile, 
298 ;  logically  congruous  with  determin- 
ism and  hedonism,  330,  331. 

SENSATIONS:  logical  import  of,  57;  as 
functions  of  experience,  58 ;  as  point  of 
contact  with  reality,  90;  place  in  judg- 
ment, 154;  and  ideas,  164  ff.;  (see Im- 
pressions, Psychical). 

SENSOEI-MOTOE  ACTIVITY,  193,  200. 

SHAFTESBUEY,  301. 

SIGWAET,  C. :  view  of  judgment,  147. 

SKEPTICISM,  50  note,  85. 

"SOCIAL  CUEEENCY":  implies  an  iden- 
tity of  aspect  of  an  object  to  different 
persons,  229 ;  object  having,  an  abstrac- 
tion like  social  individual,  229;  not  a 
test  of  objectivity,  318-29. 

SOCEATES  :  function  of  concept,  342. 

SOPHISTS,  THE,  225. 

SPENCEE,  H.,  248,  250  note  1,  315  note. 

STANDABD  (see  also  Predicate) :  identi- 
fied with  predicate  in  ethical  judgment, 
238-40 ;  function  of,  in  ethical  judgment, 
274,  299,  300;  morphology  and  mode  of 
reconstruction  or,  296,  297 ;  an  ultimate 
ethical,  impossible,  299;  objectivity  of, 
300,301. 

STIMULUS  :  of  thought,  7,  8,  17,  24,  37-40, 
47X81;  Lotze's  view  of,  27,  29,  30:  view 
criticised,  30-36;  confusion  of  datum 
with,  61;  defined,  75;  and  judgment, 
153-4;  as  condition  of  thinking,  193  ff. : 
as  direct  and  indirect,  195-7 ;  of  ethical 
judgment,  238-41,  291;  of  economic, 
judgment,  241-6,  302;  (see  Content, 
Datum). 

STOUT,  G.  F. :  referred  to,  349. 

STEATTON,  G.  M.,  318  note. 

STBUCTUEE,  15,  16,  17,  18,  24,  75;  (see 
Function). 

SUBJECT  :  of  judgment,  how  constituted, 
75  note ;  as  constructed  by  thought,  94 
ff.,  103;  as  a  part  of  judgment,  118  ff.; 
as  reality,  88  ff . ;  as  inside  and  outside 
of  judgment,  93,96;  functional  theory 
of,  111,  125 ;  as  that  requiring  explana- 
tion, 208,  211  ff . ;  as  modified  by  deduc- 
tion, 212  ;  given  by  analysis  of  situation, 
232;  interacts  with  predicate  in  judg- 
ment, 232;  of  ethical  judgment,  258, 
296-8;  of  economic  judgment,  259,  260, 
304,  309-11 ;  (see  Copula,  Datum,  Judg- 
ment, Predicate). 

SUBJECTIVE:  distinguished  from  objec- 
tive, 25;  Lotze's  view  of  impressions 
as  purely,  27,  28;  view  criticised,  31; 
definition  of,  39 ;  developed  only  within 
reflection,  52,  53;  (see  Psychical). 

SUBJECTIVISM  :  in  Lotzc,  83, 84 ;  in  Royce, 
360. 

SUBJECT-MATTEE  OF  THOUGHT:  distin- 
guished as  stimulus,  datum,  and 
content,  7,  8,  24;  confusion  of  these 
(genetic)  distinctions,  17,  18;  as  ante- 
cedent, Study  II ;  as  datum,  Study  III ; 
as  content,  Study  IV. 


388 


STUDIES  IN  LOGICAL  THEORY 


SUBSTANCE:  ethical  theories  based  on 
logic  involved  in  rationalistic  concep- 
tion of,  298,  299;  meaning  of  concept 
of,  326,  327;  type-form  of  conduct 
analogous  to  concept  of  a  particular 
kind  of,  327,  328. 

SUBSTANTIATION:  significance  of 
Plato's,  of  ideas,  342  ff. 

SUPPOSITION  AND  HYPOTHESIS,  178-81. 

SWEET,  HENRY  :  quoted,  153  note. 

SYNTHETIC  (see  Reconstruction). 

TAYLOR,  A.  E.,  299  note  2,  315  note,  316, 
324. 

TELEOLOGY  (see  End,  Purpose). 

TEMPTATION  :  ethical,  238, 301 ;  economic, 
305. 

TENSION  :  as  stimulus  to  thought,  37,  38, 
49,  50,  53,  70, 85;  in  relation  to  constitu- 
tion of  sensory  datum,  53,  58,  59,  70; 
constitution  of  meaning  as  distinct 
from  fact,  75,  85, 154,  237-46,  250,  251,  255, 
291-5,  374  ff. ;  (see  Purpose,  Recon- 
struction). 

THALES:  hisapx>?,  water,  209;  in  relation 
to  deduction,  212,  214. 

THOUGHT  :  forms  of,  58  ff . ;  as  modes  of 
organizing  data,  63;  three  kinds  ac- 
cording to  Lotze,  68,  69;  as  positing 
and  distinguishing,  69;  validity  of  its 
function,  76-82;  of  its  products,  82-5; 
instrumental  character,  78-^82;  as  dis- 
criminating sensory  qualities,  200-202 ; 
(see  Judgment,  Reflection). 

TIME  :  as  involved  in  judgment,  120  ff. 

TRANSCENDENTALISM,  29,  43-8. 

TRENDELENBURG,  A. :  view  of  judgment, 

TRUTH  :  criterion  of,  84 ;  Bosanquet's  con- 
ception of,  105 ;  popular  criterion  of, 
105  ff . ;  and  purpose,  Study  XI;  repre- 
sentational versus  teleological  view  of, 
341  ff. ;  criterion  of,  361  ff. ;  (see  Objec- 
tivity, Validity). 

UEBERWEG  :  vi«w  of  judgment,  147. 

UNIFORMITY  :  of  nature,  206. 

UNITY  :  of  the  world,  207. 


UNIVERSAL  :  first  and  second  according 
to  Lotze,  56,  59,  69;  ideas  as,  97  ff.,  113; 
judgment  as,  136;  Mr.  Royce's  treat- 
ment of,  354  ff . ;  necessity  and,  357. 

VALIDITY:  of  thought,  7,  8;  relation  to 
genesis,  14, 15;  test,  17, 18;  defines  con- 
tent of  thought,  24 ;  problem  of,  Study 
IV ;  Lotze's  dilemma  regarding,  71-85  ; 
of  bare  object  of  thought,  72-6:  of 
activity  of  thought,  76-82;  of  product 
of  thought,  82-5;  (see  Objectivity, 
Reality,  Truth). 

VALUE:  Lotze's  distinction  of,  from 
existence,  28,  29;  view  criticised,  31,  41, 
45;  organized,  of  experience,  42-8;  de- 
termined in  and  by  a  logical  process, 
233;  nature  of  consciousness  of,  273, 
333-5;  function  of  consciousness  of, 
335-7 ;  properly  mediate  and  functional 
in  character,  338-40. 

VALUATION  (see  also  Ethical  judgment, 
Economic  judgment):  includes  only 
ethical  and  economic  types  of  judg- 
ment, 227,  236,  338-40;  general  account 
of  process  of,  272,  295;  reconstructive 
of  self  as  well  as  of  reality,  312. 

VENN,  JOHN  :  origin  of  hypothesis,  169. 

"WARRANT":  consciousness  of,  accom- 
panies purely  factual  as  well  as  valua- 
tional  judgment  processes,  276, 277 ;  the 
constitutive  feature  of  survey  of  fac- 
tual conditions,  278,  279. 

WELTON,  J. :  origin  of  hypothesis,  171. 

WHEWELL,  WILLIAM,  163 ;  view  of  sensa- 
tions and  ideas,  164, 165 ;  of  induction, 
165 ;  a  certain  agreement  between  him 
and  Mill,  166. 

WIESER,  F.  VON,  335  note  2. 

WILL:  as  related  to  thought,  366  note; 
(see  Activity,  End,  Purpose). 

WUNDT,  W. :  view  of  judgment,  147 ;  view 
of  mathematical  induction,  173;  for- 
mation and  proof  of  hypothesis,  177  ff. ; 
distinction  between  supposition  and 
hypothesis,  178  ff. 

"WRONG"  (see  "Bad"). 

XENOPHANES  :  his  logical  position,  216. 

ZENO:  his  dialectic,  214. 


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